


Everybody's Fine

by Fluencca



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (kinda), Angst and Humor, BAMF Peter Parker, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad, Kidnapping, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Some Humor, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, spiderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23733613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluencca/pseuds/Fluencca
Summary: Every time Tony comes-to he gasps, like a drowning man desperate for air. There are shadows, and moving shapes that won’t come into focus, and soft hands that roughly shove pills into his mouth and then hold it shut, crushing his nose until he swallows. He does, but the hands never let up.*Tony and Steve have been taken from opposite sides of the world, and Peter, Rhodey and Happy team up with Sam and Nat to find their missing friends. People meet Peter for the first time, Peter meets them, fun times are had by all. Except, well, Tony. And Steve, probably.
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Peter Parker & Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker & Sam Wilson, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 64
Kudos: 268





	1. Happy

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, another kidnapping fic. It's just the easiest way to get the boys where I want them--separated and worried for one another... 
> 
> This is a vague sequel to my story, "Insane Mistakes that Everybody Makes." Mostly, I didn't want to write another, less-good version of Peter meeting Nat. For the purposes of this story, a tl;dr will suffice: Peter and Natasha have met, and they're cool with each other. 
> 
> I started writing this in December, long before Covid-19 was on our radar. But then quarantine and lockdown happened, and I needed to get this out already because it was stalling. I was stalling. Apparently waiting for perfect inspiration and writing conditions is a luxury. So I humbly offer this as is.
> 
> The work is complete, and I will post-as-I-edit.

Every time Tony comes-to he gasps, like a drowning man desperate for air. There are shadows, and moving shapes that won’t come into focus, and soft hands that roughly shove pills into his mouth and then hold it shut, crushing his nose until he swallows. He does, but the hands never let up. He jerks and writhes and tries to shake his head loose from the firm hands over his mouth and nose, but his own hands are tied behind him and he is never able to. Each time his stomach spasms, as though that could compensate for the missing air in his lungs. Each time he loses and the darkness overtakes him while those soft hands keep holding his head in place, and each time his last thought is _no, not like this._

But he doesn’t die, not like that. The cycle repeats, he doesn’t know how many times. The first time he wakes and is not immediately suffocated he’s too dazed to really be thankful. He doesn’t know—anything. His head is heavy, but floating, and he’s being dragged across light and metal and doors. He can’t feel his feet.

They stop. He’s dropped—heaved—and his head must split wide open. He doesn’t know how he’s still alive. The pain embraces the nausea bubbling somewhere between his stomach and his throat, and he vomits. He’s too weak to move, and his hands are bound anyway, so he just lies on his stomach and gags, bringing up only a sliver of something bitter and yellow.

“ _iğrenç_ ,” he hears, and then a boot is crushing his back. He can’t breathe again, but it only lasts a minute as a pair of hands releases his. Another is pulling off his shoes, his socks, and now he feels his feet because they’re freezing.

There’s a noise, something slams loud enough to make him wheeze with the agony it ricochets inside his head. He shuts his eyes against the pain, and it doesn’t help. He curls into himself, hoping that when he wakes up he’s, he’s—he thinks his goodbyes in his head, because he didn’t get a chance to say them before and he’s not sure he’ll wake up.

But he does wake up, cold and dizzy and nauseous and not exactly alone, and Tony wishes again he’d gotten to say goodbye.

~*~

 _R_ … _e,_ Happy’s forefinger traced the keyboard as he hummed lightly, one of those stupid Christmas songs that have been stuck in his head since November. He hated the winter but loved the holidays, and even though it was well into January, the joyously cheesy songs were a gift that kept on giving—oh— _P_ and _o_ right next to it, he loved it when that happened, _r…t_. _Updated asset-security report._ He knew that Pepper rarely read them, she trusted his judgement and she didn’t really care about the particulars, but he liked doing things the right way.

He sat back and considered changing the font, but before he could decide his phone rang. He picked it up on the second ring, still vaguely guilty that barely four months ago, he’d have let it ring through to voice mail.

“Parker.” He glanced at the time on his computer. “School’s not even out yet, what’s up?”

“Hey, Happy.” The kid paused, and when he spoke again it was with a certain hesitancy. “So, um, this may sound a little weird, but have you heard from Mr. Stark? I texted him earlier but he hasn’t answered me yet.”

“Well, actually,” Happy said, and even though he was sure he pulled up Tony’s calendar, “I haven’t spoken to him, but that’s expected. He went abroad late last night, to a conference in, uh, South Sudan, something to do with irrigation tech. He’s probably still in the air. Didn’t he mention that yesterday?” Happy sat back, and pulled up his report again. He made the font a little bigger.

“Well, that’s the thing.” The kid lowered his voice, probably to avoid being overheard. “He never showed yesterday.”

Happy stopped dicking around with the font and closed the document, because it was distracting him. He was mishearing the kid.

“What do you mean, he didn’t show? He never misses your little dates. I saw him just before he left.”

“I know, Happy. That’s why I texted him. I thought maybe something came up—I know he’s busy, but he never—I mean, he usually doesn’t—but, it’s fine if he _did_ , I just thought maybe you spoke to him?”

Happy heard what the kid breaking his tongue trying not to say, and he agreed. Tony never skipped out on the kid, would never ghost him like that. He looked forward to the days he was able to find an excuse to be in the City so he could _check in_ or _make sure he was on the up and up_ or whatever stupid little name he tried to call his visitation with the kid. Happy knew that Tony sometimes rearranged his whole schedule to keep Tuesdays clear, because he knew that was the day the kid finished a little earlier and they’d have some time to catch up before patrolling.

He tucked the phone between his shoulder and cheek, and logged into his localized Friday interface. He hadn’t wanted it, but Tony thought it was prudent for his head of security to have access to his AI.

“Just a sec, kid, let me see what I can see,” Happy said. He started typing, but he couldn’t find the damned _i_ anywhere on the damned keyboard, so he decided to use the voice command, instead.

“Friday, do you have a location on Tony Stark?”

“Sure thing. Let me Google that for you,” Friday said amiably, and ran his request, verbatim, through a search engine.

“Fuck. Where is Tony Stark right now?” Happy tried again, enunciating as carefully as he could, his voice loud and clear.

“Showing results for, _Fuck wear Tony Stark,_ ” Friday said, and Happy didn’t look away as fast as he should have. He tried to close the window, but only managed to mute and then unmute the scene before him. So he shut the browser altogether, but he couldn’t stop the disgusted _ich_ that escaped him. He’d found Tony in some compromising positions in his time—who of his friends hasn’t? —but the image of Iron Man wrapped only in red-and-gold leather straps, boning a _very_ convincing Tony Stark lookalike, was now seared into his retinas.

It had to be a lookalike, right?

A bell rang over the phone, and he pushed the thought aside.

“Listen, Parker, something weird is definitely going on. Tony’s AI just became more useless than Alexa. Let me ask around an I’ll call you back, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Happy. I gotta get to class, anyway. But let me know?”

Happy promised he would, and hung up. The kid was worried, which worried happy even more than Friday’s sudden dip in IQ. The last time the kid was worried about something he’d been on the fringe of one of the most competent criminal groups to target Tony in years.

The first thing Happy did was check in with the airfield. The jet was still there. This _was_ actually typical of Tony, who often chose, last minute, to take his suit. It was faster, if a little less comfortable. He’d have to take manual inventory of all of Tony’s suits, to see if one was missing. He grabbed a pad and jotted down _call pp, check suits,_ and then he made his phone calls.

They didn’t put his mind at ease. Pepper had also noticed that Friday was operating in an extremely limited capacity, and was in the middle of setting up backup software. She also thought Tony was on a plane, but when Happy told her he wasn’t, she shushed the chaotic noise behind her and told Happy to do what he could to look into it. She promised to head back to the east coast as soon as she could disentangle herself from her commitments in LA.

He was glad she was taking this seriously, but part of him was hoping she’d laugh at his overbearing nature and tell him to drop it, that Tony was just _fine_ , just being Tony. It was the same part of him that missed the days where Tony dropping off the face of the planet just meant he was being irresponsible with some chick somewhere. But between having Pepper and having this kid, Tony just didn’t do that anymore.

He sat back in his chair after he ended the call with Pepper, and took a deep breath. Because he didn’t want to call Rhodey. If Rhodes didn’t have any other information, he’d have to assume Tony was missing, again, with no way for Happy to find him, _again._ When Afghanistan happened he’d only been Tony’s driver, which was bad enough. But now he was head of security, and the thought of trying to find Tony with Friday offline, and no earthly idea of who might have taken him, was making his heart race.

“Jesus, get it together, Hogan,” he muttered, and taking off his jacket, he tugged on his shirt a few times at the armpits. If it was going to be a long day, he didn’t want to start it by stress-sweating through his shirt. There was nothing to it.

But Rhodey didn’t answer, and when Happy made his way to check on the suits, he saw why. Rhodes was just climbing out of his own War Machine armor, adjusting the limbs and locking the suit with an eye-scan. Happy supposed he’d just returned from DC, and he meant to ask him, but Rhodey spoke first.

“Happy,” Rhodes asked, “have you spoken to Tony?”

Happy opened and closed his fist, trying to calm himself. This didn’t sound good. “Uh, no. I was about to ask you the same thing. I think he’s… Missing.”

“Did he call you, too?”

“Who?” Happy asked, and if he couldn’t keep his eyes from narrowing, that was fine. He didn’t think Rhodey knew about the kid, or that the kid knew Rhodes, for that matter.

“Sam.”

“Gonzales? From accounting?”

“I--? No, not Sam Gonzales from accounting. What does he have to do with Cap? Wilson, Sam Wilson.”

Happy shook his head and looked around the room, like the answer to what the hell was going on was hiding in one of the corners.

“What? Cap? Who’s talking about Cap? Who called you, and who’s missing?”

“Sam Wilson called me.” Rhodey spoke slowly and emphatically. He bent down to massage his legs in their braces after the flight in the suit. “He said that Cap was AWOL. He missed a check-in, and that hasn’t happened _ever._ He wanted to know if we’ve picked up on any buzz or chatter or anything. I tried calling Tony, but he must not have service in Sudan.”

Happy looked up at Rhodey, glad he was here. They were going to need all hands on-deck.

“Yeah. Tony’s not in Sudan. He’s missing, too.”

~*~

It had been a frustrating afternoon. Happy and Rhodey began to look for leads, but not only had they not found anything, it seemed they were operating somehow with negative information.

They didn’t know when or where Tony was taken, or how, or by whom, and had even less information about Rogers. And what was worse—at the back of their minds was the sneaking suspicion that maybe they were wrong. Maybe this was a coincidence? Maybe Tony had fallen off the radar _in order_ to meet Cap? It wouldn’t be the first time. But Happy and Rhodes knew what happened in Siberia, and they didn’t think Tony would risk meeting Cap again without a suit.

Unless he had taken some new prototype suit he’d been secretly working on? That wouldn’t be a first, either.

There were just too many variables to work with, and too little information.

Rhodes had even tried to get traffic cam footage from the area Tony was headed, but the NYPD was being obstinately unhelpful. The red tape was staggering, and it all had to be above board without Friday to push things along, technologically speaking.

It was already several hours past dark, and all they had was the helpless knowledge that something was wrong.

Pepper, at least, had some better luck with Friday. She arrived at the Compound just as the sun was setting, trailed by two algorithmists who were supposed to be the best SI had to offer. They had been with her for hours, testing Friday and running checks and retesting for bugs and changes to her code.

They’d found that she wasn’t malfunctioning, but that she’d been deliberately locked by Tony around noon the day before. They still didn’t know how to unlock her, but at least they had a solid confirmation that something had happened. Tony would never lock Happy and Pepper out of Friday unless he feared she could be used as a weapon, or leverage.

Rhodey swore colorfully. “And _fuck_ them,” he finished vehemently, and slammed his laptop onto the table, and then lowered himself carefully into a chair. “We don’t have probable cause for a warrant to see the traffic cams, and the only judge who’s still working right now won’t budge.”

Rhodes pressed his mouth into a thin line, and looked to Happy. He shook his head. “Any other ideas? Anyone else who can help us with this? Sam is coming, he should be here in a couple of hours, but… We need more people on this.” He exhaled sharply and shook his head at the table, again. “Not to mention more muscles. If someone is keeping both Tony and Rogers captive, it’s gonna take more than me and you to get them out. You got anyone? You know how to contact that Spider-Man guy?”

“Shit _,_ ” Happy realized, and plunged both hands into his pockets. He pulled out a crumpled note. _Call pp._ “I was supposed to call him back.” He looked up at Rhodes, belatedly processing what he’d said.

“You think we should bring him in on this?”

“If he’s willing to help, _yeah_ ,” Rhodes said, like it was obvious. “I don’t think we really have a choice.”

Happy looked down at the note in his hands. Tony would kill him, he would outright blast him to hell if he revealed the kid’s identity… But Tony had to be alive to do that, and Happy had to admit, with Tony missing and with Friday locked down, the kid had the next best resources. And as for willing… He’d be _dying_ to help, he knew.

“I need to go talk to Pepper,” Happy said, and shoved the note back in his pocket. 

The walk down to Pepper’s make-shift Compound office was short. He paused for a moment outside and texted Parker, then he courtesy-knocked and poked his head into Pepper’s office. She was still with the engineers, supervising as they did their best to find any more clues to Friday’s lockdown.

“Hi, Happy,” she said kindly with a tired smile, and then added, “No, still nothing.” to the two guys working beside her.

“Uh, we need to talk.” He moved only his eyes to pointedly indicate the engineers. “Privately.”

Pepper sighed.

“Okay, guys, why don’t you take twenty minutes, get some coffee or something,” she said. The two guys rose, shooting Happy slightly annoyed looks that their work was being interrupted.

“Sorry, fellas. Important security things. Highest clearance.” He tapped on his tag to illustrate that he had the clearance to back up his claim. It said it, right there.

Once the door was closed, Happy turned fully to Pepper.

“Rhodey and I want to bring Spider-Man in.”

“Uh, great?” Pepper shook her head in confusion, glancing up from her laptop. The super-hero stuff wasn’t really her thing. She liked to focus on the tangible things she could do, like authorize jets and keep the Relief Fund people up-to-date.

“Great,” Happy agreed. “So I’m gonna drive down to the City to get him, I should be back in a couple of hours.”

At this her head snapped up, her full attention on Happy. “What?” She leaned forward over her desk, then shook her head as though she’d misheard him. “Happy, you can’t leave for two hours! Sam is going to be here, and I don’t want him here unsupervised! Why can’t Spider-Man drive up?”

“Well, he doesn’t drive,” Happy said. He kinda hoped to put this off till he got back with the kid, at least to split the responsibility with him.

“I’m _sorry?”_ Pepper asked, and now she stood up. “His Highness Spider-Man _doesn’t drive?_ Where does he get off demanding a car service!” It wasn’t a question. “Have him rent a car, we need you here, Happy.”

“No, Pepper, it’s not that he doesn’t _like_ to drive, it’s that he _can’t_ drive.”

She crossed her arm, head shaking in disbelief. “What the hell kind of superhero _doesn’t drive_?”

Happy looked over her shoulder, his mouth open as he tried to figure out how to respond to that. Pepper noticed his hesitancy immediately. Of-course she did.

“Happy, why are you making that face? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing! Pepper, it’s nothing, really. I—,” he stuttered for a moment, “I mean, you’ll meet him, I’m sure you’ll love him.”

He paused, and cringed. This was a terrible time to bring this up. “One _tiny_ thing, though, we’re taking him out of school, so you’re gonna need to invent some kind Internship Retreat, to appease the administration.”

Pepper crossed her arms, and shook her head slightly. Her long ponytail swayed behind her. “Isn’t it winter break? I mean, if Tony found him, I assume he’s in Polytech, and they’re on break.”

“Well, he’s in Queens, actually, and his semester is a little… different.”

She still looked like she knew she was getting only half the picture, but she relented. “Fine, whatever. If you think he can help us find Tony, I’ll write up some internship thing and email the Dean.”

“Uh, principal.”

Her eyes flicked up to his, but everything else was still. They very hustle of the Compound seemed to shy away from the intensity that suddenly brewed itself between them.

“No,” she said, slowly, like if she drew out the word its power would increase enough to negate what he’d just said.

Happy shrugged helplessly. “So, I’m gonna go,” he said, and turned quickly to leave her office. He could hear her following after him.

“Happy Hogan, don’t you walk away from me!” He tried to blink himself some courage. He turned around to face Pepper. They were alone in the hallway—thankfully—because she didn’t seem preoccupied with who might overhear them. He winced at how loud she was.

“What the hell did Tony do? You mean to tell me he recruited a _high-school kid_?”

“Pepper, first of all—” he gestured pushing down with his hands. She interrupted before he could get to his second.

“Don’t _shush_ me!” She said, but she lowered her voice to a forceful whisper, as she looked around surreptitiously, searching for potential eavesdroppers. Reassured there were none, she raised her voice again, but not as loud as it had been before.

“How can we possibly let a high-schooler go searching for Tony? We can’t be in charge of that! What if something dangerous happens?” Her eyes were now scrunched closed, her hand worrying at the bridge of her nose, like she was already trying to solve the PR nightmare this had the potential to become. But then she looked back up, and Happy could see that she wasn’t thinking about the company. She was worried. Worried about what it meant to bring Spider-Man onboard, and what it meant _not_ to.

“Happy, you’re supposed to keep Tony from doing these stupid things,” she said, and it bothered Happy more than it should have; she, of all people, should know better. He had never been the guy to pluck a drink out of Tony’s hand, he just taught him how to handle the hangovers. Help him do his stupid things without getting himself killed.

“Pepper—this kid isn’t a stupid thing Tony did. It’s, he’s…” Happy cast around for what he wanted to say. He hadn’t ever bothered to think this through, no more than Tony himself or the kid had, he was sure. Playing it by ear had been fine until now. “He’s smart. And he’s capable. And he cares about Tony, okay? Like, _really cares._ And we need someone like that to help us find him. Tony trusts him. He gave him an AI we can use to look for them. She’s no Friday, but… We need him.

“And besides, he lives with his aunt and she sanctions what he does. More-or-less. Enough for us. So can I go get him, so we can start looking for Tony?”

Pepper dropped her shoulders in defeat. “At least tell me he’s an idiot? He got left back a bunch of times and he’s like one of those 19 or 20-year-old seniors?”

Happy shook his head. “He’s not a senior.”

“Oh, God,” Pepper moaned, and buried her face in both her hands.


	2. Rhodey

Tony was _so_ confused.

He couldn’t keep track of what was happening, his present and his memories and his thoughts were all tumbling one over another like puppies trying to get his attention. The moment he tried to focus on one the others leapt at his consciousness, demanding his attention before they, too, wandered away.

Tony decided to relax against it. He could feel, somewhere underneath the mayhem of his jumbled thoughts, that his mind _was_ making connections; he just couldn’t access them yet. He could wait out whatever this hangover was.

And it was some kind of hangover, he was sure. It felt remarkably similar to first moments after the _blackout_ part of being black-out drunk. But he definitely hadn’t gotten drunk, because he’d been…

The man in the lab coat tapped loudly on the glass that lined Steve Rogers’ cage, and he was so _loud._ “You with us? Time for another sample. I know this is uncomfortable,” he was saying, as he grabbed Rogers’ arm, trapped in what looked like a fucking beartrap, “but remember, it ain’t personal. We live in the Age of Bullshit, where antivax mammas have more influence than scientists.” Here the man pointed at himself, and that reminded Tony, did he call his mom?

No, not his mom, Nanny. He’d meant to call her, it had been urgent, but he couldn’t remember what he’d wanted to say.

He’d think about that later. Now, from where he sat with his back against the wall of his own little cage, he tried to focus on what the doc was saying. It sounded important, too.

“Man isn’t the disease of this world, _disease_ is. There will always be some deadly new virus around the corner, and Hydra only wants to have a cure before it hits. That’s what we’re doing here. You’ll be free to go once we’re done,” The man said, and _No, he won’t,_ Yinsen echoed, and Tony was going to shush him before he remembered he wasn’t there.

Is it a cage if two of the walls are stone? Tony looked up. There were bars above him. A cage has a lid, right? Also cans have lids, he knew. But not _the_ can. The toilet was vacuum operated, and it didn’t even have a seat, let alone a lid.

Rogers was resting against the glass of his cage—where had the Doc gone? They were alone. He raised bleary eyes to Tony, and took several deep breaths before he spoke. “They’re looking for you, right? Rhodey and everyone? I… I don’t think I can get you out of here.”

Tony wanted to say _I don’t know,_ and also _everyone? You_ took _everyone_ and also _no shit._ But he couldn’t exactly remember what Cap had said to earn those responses, so he just looked at him until Rogers began to look worried. He tried to sit up higher, but winced as he pulled on his arm, still enclosed in those hideous jaws.

“Tony? Tony, are you alright?”

_Nope_ , Tony thought. Then he closed his eyes and made believe he was anywhere.

~*~

Rhodey was surprised that Happy was so certain Spider-Man would be willing to come up. He knew Tony sometimes helped him out, and he assumed that Spider-Man liked Tony well enough—everyone did, if that’s what Tony wanted. But he knew he was young, probably still in college somewhere in the City if he was living out in Queens, and taking indeterminate time-off to find a possibly-missing Iron Man was a big thing to ask.

So he was surprised, and grateful. And perhaps a little suspicious of what he’d want in return.

Rhodey didn’t trust people around Tony. There was often an angle, an advantage someone tried to exploit. It was odd feeling protective of the most powerful man in the world, but there it was.

Always, practically since they’d met, he’d been protective _of_ and annoyed _by_ Tony Stark. He didn’t fight it, because annoyed was more productive than the alternative. Rhodey was certain that if he ever allowed himself to be worried about Tony, it would because he knew it was _over_. And this couldn’t be the end, so Rhodey was annoyed.

If he tried, he could probably pinpoint the exact date of the first time he’d gotten really annoyed with Tony. It was the weekend after the 1992 federal budget had been published, and for the first time in decades every single one of the defense-budget requests had been approved. It was the largest contract ever awarded a single defense developer, and James had been proud of himself. It had been months of negotiating, and those had come after months of fighting over whom to negotiate _with._ He had been under immense pressure to work with Obadiah Stane, who’d been handling the defense contracts even before Howard Stark had passed away.

But the Stark heir had just become CEO, and it had taken barely ten minutes into their first meeting for Rhodes to realize that Stane was a patronizing asshole and that Stark wasn’t. It wasn’t only the way the older man had kept calling him _Jimmy_ and dropping his rank when he addressed him. It was some deeper mannerism, especially when Tony Stark was in the room. And when _Stark_ omitted his rank and invented a nickname for him, it held all the warmth and familiarity of a kid suggesting a codename to a possible playmate. Rhodes was several years older than the Stark kid, and they were both too old for codenames, but something in him responded to the call. “Rhodey. I like that,” he’d said, and shook Tony’s hand. They’d cut Stane out of the following meeting.

And Rhodes had to admit, working with Tony was the most fun he’d had since he stopped flying combat missions. Sure, Tony had a sharpness to him and a sense of humor that could be cruel, but it was always directed at those Rhodes thought had deserved it. In a world that was part wolfish businessmen, part shady politicians and part military hierarchy, Tony’s zero-fucks-to-give-company had been downright gratifying.

The cost, of course, came from the chain-of-command. Rhodey had been plainly told that he’d never make it to Major if he didn’t cut the crap and just sign the contract Stane had offered them. But Rhodes had believed that dealing with Tony would get him the fairer deal, and that belief had paid off _bigtime_. So much so that his CO had taken personal credit for the decision to negotiate with the young Mr. Stark.

Rhodey hadn’t argued, but he did intend to congratulate Tony personally. This was a win. It was an honor. And it was Tony’s.

He found him in his office in the Stark Building in downtown DC, just as few blocks away from Rhodey’s quarters. The expansive suite was still undecorated, just as desk, a computer, a phone, and too-white walls. Tony had the phone on speaker, but he waved Rhodey in, anyway.

“That’s fantastic news for us, my boy!” Rhodey made sure his face was locked in indifference, but fuck, did he hate the smugness that roiled off of Stane, even over the phone. Tony didn’t seem to notice, though. He looked like he was preening with the praise.

“I’ll call the Board and let them know. You celebrate tonight, yeah? Finish off that Macallan. God,” Stane laughed, deep and throaty. Almost genuine. “You know what? Howard was wrong about you, you’re really something else!”

_What?_ Hadn’t Tony’s parents died only a few months ago? Rhodey didn’t know whether the backhanded compliment was meant as barb or if it was merely tone-deaf, but Tony had obviously taken it hard. The proud, youthful smile was replaced with a porcelain reflection of itself, a meticulous construction Rhodes was a little surprised he could see through.

He smiled like he hadn’t. “So you heard the news?”

“Yeah, Obie just called. It’s good.” He paused. “Right?”

Rhodes took a seat. “It’s great. This is the biggest deal ever made with a single contractor. You really should be proud, Mr. Stark.”

Tony pulled a face. “Please, Tony. Mr. Stark is—was,” he swallowed, “too formal for me. And for you,” he added in a much lighter tone, gesturing at Rhodey. “This deal is as much your doing as it is mine,” Tony said, and reached down into a desk drawer. He pulled out a pair of tumblers and a bottle of whiskey—no, honest-to-God _Scotch_. He had good taste; Rhodes had to give him that.

He poured them each a measure, and offered a toast. “To many more deals, to lots more fun negotiations, and to shared drinks with friends,” Tony finished with a flourish, and they each raised a glass. Rhodes raised his own glass, and then closed his eyes as took a small sip, focusing on the undertones of one of the best drinks he’d ever had. He opened his eyes just in time to see Tony grimace, _gag,_ and then forcibly swallow a mouthful of Scotch.

Rhodey couldn’t help it, he laughed.

“Are you serious? If you’re too young to enjoy Scotch, maybe you’re too young to be drinking it, yeah?” He was careful to keep his cadence playful, but he couldn’t help the way his eyes narrowed as he examined this billionaire genius CEO who was also just a kid.

“I’m twenty-one,” he said, and his belligerence only made Rhodes laugh harder.

“Yeah, okay, kid. But maybe let’s nurse these, alright?” Tony sat back in his chair, holding his drink but refraining from sipping it further. Rhodes counted that as a small victory.

“What did Stane have to say about the deal? He wasn’t pissed that he was cut from the negotiations?” Rhodey asked. He’d been wondering that for weeks now, but there hadn’t been a good time to ask.

“Nah, he’s just happy with the bottom line. He said the usual,” Tony answered, then deepened his kid-voice into a passable imitation of Stane’s gratingly jovial pitch. “Good work. Good deal. This ups the ante, so you better get deals _at least_ as good all the way through the new millennium, you got that Champ?”

Rhodes laughed uncomfortably. Were those the traces of a threat? He set down his tumbler, and used the opportunity to circle back to the conversation he’d overheard.

“So, what’s with Stane? Why does he keep taking shots at you?” He narrowed his eyes at Tony, determined to get a good read. He was a good kid, and Rhodes didn’t like the thought of Stane’s influence on him. It was a cancer; even the few short interactions he’d witnessed attested to that.

“Shots?” Tony looked genuinely surprised, and Rhodey found himself getting annoyed. The kid was _so fucking smart._ How could he not see that this guy was rotten? “Nah, he cares about me. He’s known me since forever. Knew my dad,” Tony continued, and… Rhodes couldn’t quite place the emotions painting themselves across Tony’s face. Grief, but also regret, and maybe even anger.

“He’s just keeping me in line. And he said to celebrate!” Tony lifted his glass again, and took a larger swig. He reacted the same as he did first time.

Rhodes balanced for a moment, feeling nothing. Then he made the decision to lean away from the profound sadness and allowed himself to tumble into a quiet rage. It was infuriating to watch this kid—he would still be in college if he were anyone else—self-destruct because he didn’t know that _care_ didn’t mean encouraging alcohol and insinuating horrible things about dead parents. And the worst part was that Rhodes wasn’t sure he could say anything. Taking away the last adult in this kid’s life would… Rhodes couldn’t be responsible for that.

But he was responsible. It’s what he did. And what’s more—he had a codename now. So even though Tony was being an idiot, Rhodey said, “Alright, let’s celebrate, kid. But not with Scotch in the office. Let’s grab something to eat, huh?”

It was only one slightly-less-drunken night, but that was a win, too. Rhodey could look out for the kid, in his own way.

And for the greater part of 25 years, he’d done his best. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes an argument, sometimes a downright guilt-trip. The last thing he’d said to Tony before his big Jericho presentation was a guilt-laden plea to wear the ballistic vest. He’d all but told Tony outright that if he died in Afghanistan, his death would be on Rhodey’s hands. And then… Stane betrayed Tony more deeply than Rhodey could have imagined, even if he’d been half-anticipating it.

Only a few years later another trust was shattered, which caught them completely by surprise. He and Tony had healed by picking up each other’s pieces after Cap’s betrayal.

And now this. Rhodey didn’t think this was a betrayal, just shitty luck, but that also meant he was powerless to stop it from happening. He didn’t have military resources, and he barely even had Stark resources. He felt the familiar, awful tug of protectiveness, but for the first time since 1992 he also felt helpless, with nothing to do but wait for things to unfold.

He fucking hated it.

He spent another hour rereading the same broken bits of information they had, committing them to memory. Tony disappeared after he left the Compound yesterday afternoon. Cap was in Madrid when he last made contact, his Wednesday morning. They could be anywhere in the world, their disappearance likely related but maybe not. He had used his military contacts to construct several lists of organizations that had the manpower, firepower, and brainpower to pull off a double-kidnapping like this. The overlap was thin.

Hydra.

The problem was, they hadn’t heard anything from them since before Ultron, and it would take monstrous computing power to piece together any errant snippets of data to find them.

He was taking a break to massage his legs like he should have done several hours ago, when Pepper called him and asked him to meet the quinjet that was about to touch down.

His brief conversation with Pepper was on his mind as he made his way up to the landing pad. He knew her well enough after all these years, and what she meant was evident in what she chose not to say, just as much as in her spoken words. And she hadn’t said anything beyond the barest minimum. No comfort, or optimism, or plan. His heart tightened uncomfortably at the thought that this might be _it._ Maybe he should be worried.

He opened the door just long enough for two people to rush in from the frigid night. Sam Wilson was dressed for this weather, in all black, a wool cap pulled low over his eyes. He immediately took it off, shifted his bags to his left hand, and saluted. Rhodes was taken aback. He and Sam had always been extremely casual. _He’d_ certainly never demanded the niceties of rank be observed.

Then again, there was so much between them, now, maybe it couldn’t really be redressed in any other way. The Accords and injury and running and hiding—it was too much to untangle. “Captain,” Rhodes said, and saluted back. Sam visibly relaxed.

Rhodey turned to Natasha. “I don’t really know what his deal is,” he said, and gestured with his head towards Sam, “but are we saluting one another, too?”

“I mean, you can salute me if you want, I guess,” she said, and gave a cheeky smile. God, Rhodey missed her. Her hair was jet-black, and unlike Sam, she was dressed as though she’d come from a vacation resort. All whites, with bright orange trimmings.

“Where are you coming from? You look like a ski instructor.”

“I am. I’ve been working all season up at Bear Mountain.”

Rhodey stopped mid-step down the long hallway, abruptly enough that Sam bumped into Natasha behind him. He turned to face her. “Ross has three separate teams in Russia alone—you’re telling me that you’ve been fifteen minutes north of here the whole time?”

“I touched based with Cap for a bit, gave Sam my number. But after the mess with Clint’s kids and Tony’s intern, I decided to stay close. I was curious,” she admitted with a shrug and a smile, and pushed passed him. “Where are we setting up?”

“Ground floor conference room,” he said slowly, looking after her. When Sam excused himself past as well, Rhodey shook himself and followed. He’d heard about the thing with Clint’s kids—they’d stayed at the Compound for a couple of weeks after, it was hard to miss—but he couldn’t fathom what would keep her curious enough to stick around. The report had been sparse, but it indicated that the entire thing had been less than a day start-to-finish. It had seemed like a pretty low-key event, all things considered.

He directed Sam and Nat to the adjacent lounge to drop off their equipment and shed their layers, and went into the conference room, only to find it occupied. He doublechecked that _he_ was in the right room, then remembered he was the senior-most Avenger in the Avenger Compound. In fact, he was the _only_ Avenger in the Avenger Compound, and if an intern was using his room he could kick him out. It was the guy who sometimes shadowed Tony—Rhodey sometimes wondered if he was simple or something, because he never saw him actually _do_ any interning; he only followed Tony around and rarely spoke when he was within earshot of anyone else.

“Hey, It’s… Parker, right?” Rhodes said, and didn’t wait for the kid to answer. “We’re gonna need this room.” His voice had an uncompromising edge to it, and he felt bad. For whatever reason, Tony liked this kid. He checked his watch and pretended to be surprised at the time, even though he knew it was just past eleven. He tried to soften his demeanor when he next spoke. “It’s getting pretty late, and Tony’s not here. Is someone coming to pick you up?”

The kid put his phone away, but didn’t make a move to gather his backpack, or the books he had out on the table. “Oh, uh, no. Happy told me to wait here,” he said, and folded his arms. The gesture was diffident, but somehow nonapologetic, and not relinquishing an inch of his personal space. He nodded and smiled lightly.

Okay, so probably not simple. A little entitled, though. Rhodey was about to ask him to clear out, anyway, when all the others came in. He turned to get some answers from Happy, but was only met with new questions.

Because Pepper immediately smacked Happy’s arm and hissed, “ _Him?_ Are you kidding me? He’s twelve!”

Happy held up both hands to defend himself, and responded with something Rhodey couldn’t hear over Natasha’s warmly surprised call of, “Peter!”

Sam migrated closer to Rhodey while Happy and Pepper bickered, and Natasha went over to speak to Parker like she’d known him forever.

“Dude, what is happening here?” Sam asked, and while Rhodey didn’t know, he intended to find out.

And it was a doozy.

Happy had beat helplessly around the bush, Parker had tried to interrupt him only to get shushed (and Rhodey was getting fed up with how presumptuous this kid was being), and eventually Nat just spat it out.

Peter Parker was Spider-Man.

That was… Fucked up. Even for Tony. He tried to imagine this rod-thin kid pulling a web with enough force to reverse the trajectory of the War Machine armor. He couldn’t. The kid looked like he could barely hold an elevator. What the hell had he been doing in Germany, or out on the streets of Queens?

As though he could read Rhodey’s mind, Peter immediately launched into an earnest explanation of how it had happened, taking extra care to note that Tony hadn’t _made_ him Spider-Man, he only helped him be a little more responsible about it.

Yeah, sure. Cause _that_ had Tony written all over it.

Rhodes didn’t think the kid was lying, he looked far too genuine for that. But he wondered whether that was the whole story. Because a lot of people had received gifts and tricked-out suits from Tony over the years, and very few of them came back to risk their lives for him. Was the angle here money? Resources? Not that it mattered, not really. He was responsible, after all.

Sam was on the same page, faster, and far less diplomatic. “Stark’s recruiting in preschools, now? I don’t mean to be rude, but _hell, no_. We are not going taking Little Archie on a mission.”

“Uh, that was actually pretty rude for someone who didn’t mean it,” Happy said, and squared his shoulders the way he did when someone was threatening… Tony, actually. Even though Rhodey had been about to speak, he sat back, and contented himself to watch.

The argument was circuitous, ineffective, and far too long. Sam and Pepper made their positions pretty clear, and Happy and Natasha countered each point neatly, taking turns defending either the kid or Tony. Parker, surprisingly, was mostly quiet, listening to each speaker with slightly narrowed eyes, occasionally countering a point with as few words as possible.

Rhodey decided to step in when three things became apparent: Natasha’s support was unequivocal, Pepper _wanted_ to be convinced, and Sam’s arguments all circled back to Germany. He was arguing a bruised ego, not a principle.

“Kid,” Rhodey said, and Parker’s head snapped up so sharply Rhodey had to double check he hadn’t called him a name, or something. “Are we going to convince you to let us handle this?”

Parker looked at him earnestly. “I _need_ to help.”

“Tony trusts him.” Happy said simply, emphatically.

Rhodey wasn’t so sure. Why not make the kid an Avenger if he was superheroing anyway, and Tony supposedly trusted him so much? He looked at Pepper, and raised his eyebrows. It was her call.

“Fine,” she said, and rose. She straightened her skirt, pulled on her suit jacket, and looked at the rest of them. “You guys see what you can find. I have to get back to the guys upstairs.” Her glance lingered on Rhodey.

“We’ll see where we are in the morning,” she said, and Rhodey heard again what she wasn’t saying. _We can reevaluate the situation with the kid then._ Right. No big decisions until they could ascertain how much of a liability he was.

So Rhodes took control of the meeting, explaining to Sam, Nat and Parker what little they knew and how little headway they’d made. When he finished, Parker raised his hand.

“Yeah, this isn’t school, Parker. You don’t—” he waved for Peter to lower his hand. “What is it?”

“Uh, I think I can get the traffic cams, if that helps?” He offered. His hand was still up.

“How?” Rhodey had talk to practically the entire chain of command, from the DA up. No one was budging until they had more info, which they could only get through access to the cams.

Sam sat back, and muttered something about crayons. Peter ignored him, and just picked up his pencil and began twirling it with excited dexterity. “Karen, you there?”

A clear, kind, voice came over the speakers, and Rhodey suddenly realized that Tony had given this kid an AI. Happy didn’t look surprised, but Nat did. Sam didn’t have enough context to know he should be.

Because… Tony had never given _anyone_ an AI. He barely let Bruce and Cap interact with Jarvis, and when that had blown up in his face Rhodey was sure, he was _certain_ that Tony would share his AIs only with his most intimate circle. He assumed that this Karen was a lesser version, it wasn’t like he’d given the kid Friday, but still. Rhodes sat forward, manually pulling his legs back in their braces. He examined the kid.

“I sure am, Peter. What are we up to tonight?”

“Can you call Captain Quaid?” He lit up his phone, noted the time, then added, “His cell. He’s probably driving.” The pencil danced between his fingers.

“No problem,” the AI agreed easily. The line began to ring.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sam sat forward, too. Rhodey agreed. Was this kid cold-calling someone in the military?

“Quaid’s the Captain of the 7-8, down in Brooklyn,” Peter said, and flung the pencil up with his thumb, caught it again with his pinky for a return twirl.

“We’re not exactly asking for yearbook boosters here, you can’t just—” Rhodey never finished his sentence, because the call connected and he snapped his mouth shut. He did not want to be anywhere _near_ on record with this train wreck.

“Frank Quaid.” The voice was crisp, businesslike, and not at all patient.

“Hey, man. It’s Spider-Man. How’re things?” Rhodey couldn’t _see_ the exchange, but he averted his glance, all the same. He was already getting embarrassed for the kid.

The Captain greeted him. Warmly.

Rhodey looked back at the kid, and saw him sit back, totally at ease. Across from him, Natasha looked pleased, and Happy, seated at the head of the table, was doing a terrible job of fighting a smile that was tugging at the corners of his mouth. Was that all the Captain needed by way of identifier? How often did the kid call him?

“Still processing last night’s haul. Between the goons and the guns, you left my guys a lot of work,” he said appreciatively. Rhodey’s embarrassment shifted. “The boys said they didn’t see you out there tonight. Everything okay?”

“That’s actually what I’m calling about. We might have an emergency, we kinda need access to the City’s traffic cams.” The pencil slowed down, as Peter focused on the speaker set into the table.

“What kind of emergency?”

“Missing person.”

There was a long pause. The kid barely blinked. The pencil now swung slowly back and forth, like a seesaw balancing between his deft fingers.

“You still got the URL from last time?” Quaid finally asked, and Peter sat back with a relieved, accomplished smile.

“You bet,” he said, and Karen pulled up a NY gov permissions page.

“Alright. Let me pull over and generate a password for you. It’ll be good for three hours.”

He did, and within seconds Karen was in. Rhodey could see snippets of black-and-white security footage bleeding across the screen as Karen searched for Tony.

“Who’s missing?” Quaid asked as the sounds of traffic grew loud around him again. Peter looked up, first at Natasha, then at Rhodey and Happy. They all shook their heads. Happy was even mouthing _no_ with exaggerated, silent diction, crossing his arms in front of him to indicate that this information was not to be shared _._ Rhodey agreed. They needed to control this narrative, and the fact that it had gone under the radar so far was the only positive aspect of the day.

Peter nodded, and leaned in closer to the speaker.

“Tony Stark,” he said.

Rhodey couldn’t help the clenched fists that rose above the table before spreading into an opened-palmed _what the hell?_

Peter saw, and to his credit he had the grace to look apologetic.

He ended his call, and in the same breath as _thanks, have a good night_ he said, “Don’t kill me.”

He turned to Happy, of all people. “I’m really sorry,” he apologized, “but we have to _earn_ the police’s trust. We can’t just ask for favors and not give them anything. Either Mr. Stark isn’t in trouble, and then Captain Quaid will look stupid for saying something, or he is missing, and then we might need official help.”

It was Wilson who answered him, voicing the third option it seemed the kid hadn’t considered. “Or, maybe Stark _is_ missing and this guy blabs about it, putting him and Cap in danger. The Avengers don’t work with the authorities, kid, we never have.”

“It’s _Peter,”_ he corrected sharply, even though he hadn’t before. He looked Wilson up and down. “And how’s that working out for you?”

Rhodey snorted.

He _wanted_ to stay pissed, but he couldn’t help it. Point to the kid. It might have been a little harsh, but… it wasn’t unreasonable.

“Karen,” Nat said loudly, piercing first Wilson and then the kid with her glance, cutting off any further argument. “What’s the range on the cameras you have access to? And can you access security cameras?”

“All of New York City, and extending up to parts of the Palisades Parkway. I’m sorry, but I don’t have command permissions to access privately owned security cameras.”

It was a solid start, and they ran with it. They followed Tony through the traffic cams, tracing his route well-into Manhattan, but losing him before Queens. After that it became a scavenger hunt for the yellow Audi. It was close to 2 a.m. when they found it, parked neatly in one of JFK’s external parking lots. The implication was clear, and disheartening.

They needed to check out the airport. Sam and Nat were dead on their feet, it would take Happy at least 2 hours just to get there, and the kid… The kid was still a mystery to him. He couldn’t go down to the airport, that was out of the question. Even if he could drive, Rhodes wouldn’t trust him to canvas the area alone. But since he arrived, they’d made more progress than the twelve hours before that, and his desire to help seemed to be genuine. Even now, when everyone was giving in to a lull in activity, he was pouring over a notebook, making annotations and chatting quietly into his hands-free mic, the AI in one earbud. He alone of all of them, didn’t seem to bend with the weight of the late hour.

Rhodey rose with a slight groan—he certainly was not fifteen anymore—and was about to suggest that everyone call it a night while he went to check out the airport, maybe see if he can get some of _their_ security footage, when Pepper returned to the conference room.

She had undone her ponytail, her jacket was gone, and she was barefoot. Somehow, this made her look even more determined than she had in full formal business attire. She took everyone in in a quick glance, and said, “I have an update.”

Happy and Natasha looked up from their map, and Sam shut the laptop he was using. The kid pulled at his earbud, and sat up a little straighter.

“Ellins and Rotherbury found the name of the protocol to unlock Friday,” she said, with a small nod and a smile. Rhodey breathed deeply. Having Friday back would be invaluable.

“Except,” Pepper added, because of course it wouldn’t be that easy, “it’s not saved locally, or to any of Tony’s servers, or on his cloud, or anywhere on Stark Industry servers. They’ve checked every single storage location. We know the name of the key, but we can’t find it.

“Happy, Rhodey, does the Muppet Baby Protocol mean anything to you?”

Rhodey locked eyes with Happy, saw equal confusion there. He’d never heard—

A loud _thunk_ made him turn back towards the sound. The kid had thrown his phone on—no, _at_ the table—and drooped lower in his seat.

“It’s me,” Peter said tightly, waving his hand.

“What’s you?” Pepper asked, and as though it was a tennis match, everyone turned to her, then back to the kid.

His words were polite enough, but the last time Rhodey heard that much adolescent venom must have been twenty-five years ago. “It’s me. I’m the Muppet baby.”

“Well, you’re certainly _a_ baby,” Sam offered, “but how is this about you?”

Peter shot him a dirty look, but didn’t answer him. Instead, he leaned forward and asked, “Karen, do you have a Muppet Baby Protocol?”

He raised his hands in a sarcastic _of course you do_ movement almost before she cheerfully answered, “Sure do, Peter.”

No one said anything for a moment.

Then Natasha laughed, and raised one hand to her mouth to stifle it. “That’s adorable _,_ ” she said from behind her curled fingers.

Rhodey crossed his arms, if only to have something to _do._ He felt like he was trapped in upside-down world. “Wait. You’re the Muppet baby?” He asked.

Parker shrugged stiffly, in frustration. “Apparently.”

Rhodes turned his incredulous look to Pepper.

“Don’t look at me,” she shook her head. “He’s not _my_ Muppet baby.”

He turned back to the kid. He asked again, because really, he was having a hard time wrapping his brain around this. Not only did the kid have the key to Friday, but Rhodey could recognize a codename when he heard one. With anyone else he’d assume the nature was—no, this wasn’t that. 

“Why are you Tony’s Muppet baby?”

“I—I’m not—Can we please stop calling me that?” Peter finally pleaded. Rhodey rolled his eyes, but nodded his concession.

“Fine. Do you know why Tony gave you that protocol?”

“Because he thinks he’s funny?” Peter’s irritation was, in fact, adorable. But Rhodey looked to Nat, to see whether she could answer what he’d actually been asking.

“You know Tony,” she said simply and folded her arms. “Everything has a meaning.” She allowed her glance to flicker to the kid, for the barest of moments, then settled it on Rhodey. She tilted her head a fraction.

No. No, no, no. No _way._ Was she saying—

Rhodey looked down at the kid, who was still sulking in embarrassed indignation. Embarrassed like he’d been dropped off too close to school, or given a kiss on the cheek in front of his friends, or called an embarrassing nickname in public, by a—

Whoa.

Rhodes looked back to Natasha, his eyes wide. She nodded.

Beside him, Pepper seemed to catch the implication, as well. Her hand was at her throat, worrying at a necklace that wasn’t there, as she examined the kid.

Nat was rarely wrong. With Tony, everything had a meaning.

Which reminded him, “Karen? is ‘Muppet Baby’ an acronym?”

“Yes, Colonel Rhodes. It stands for Master User Peter Parker Established Temporarily. Baby.”

Peter looked alarmed. “What? I don’t even have Master User permissions for Karen, I can’t run Friday!” his voice cracked, and even though his distress was real, Rhodey laughed too, that time; Peter buried his face in his hands.

“Don’t take it so seriously, Parker,” Rhodey said kindly, and clapped the kid on the shoulder. The kid started at his touch.

“This is a good thing.” Rhodes nodded again, as though to cement the realization that was slowly becoming more and more certain.

“Well, you all can keep all your subtext, but if we’re getting back to _the reason we’re here,_ ” Sam said, pinning all the adults in turn with a dubious look, “how is this a good thing? Are you telling me Tony saddled us with babysitting while we’re supposed to be working? We need to have this _kid_ on our hands if we want to use Friday?”

Rhodey felt Peter’s shoulders tense under his hand. He applied a bit more pressure, he himself wasn’t sure if it was to reassure or to cut him off; he answered Sam before Peter could.

“It’s a good thing because it means Tony decided Peter will only need temporary access to Friday. I bet he has several lockdown sequences, and he chose to activate one with a temporary key. And if it wasn’t obvious before, it is now: we need him. I doubt it’ll come to babysitting. Right guys?”

Happy and Nat chimed in on cue, reaffirming what he’d come to realize. Whatever was going on with this kid and Tony was more than casual. It had gotten far enough that he’d charmed even Romanoff and Hogan. How does a kid get through to Cold and Grumpy? Looking at Pepper, he could see that Thinky was still grappling with it. That was okay. So was he.

“Alright, then. Let’s get our girl Friday back,” Rhodey held his hands out, inviting any objection. Sam bit his lip and shook his head, but remained silent.

“Run the Muppet Baby Protocol.”

There was no response.

“Uh, sorry, kid,” Happy spoke up. He really did look apologetic. “I’m guessing you gotta execute the command.”

Peter stood abruptly enough that Rhodes had to take a quick step back to avoid being knocked over. He began slamming his books shut, gathering his papers, and shoving his phone in his pocket. “You know what? This is… I don’t…” He flung his backpack over his shoulder.

“I’m going to finish working in my room.” He pushed past Rhodey, then Pepper, sparing a look for neither of them. When he was halfway out the door, he half-turned and snapped, “Karen, run the Muppet Baby Protocol,” and slammed the door behind him.

Nat’s smile was forcibly containing her laughter, and just barely at that. “He’s going to kill Tony.”

“And Tony’s going to deserve it,” Happy added. Was he criticizing Tony? On behalf of the kid?

“Someone needs to fill me in,” Pepper said, her bemused eyes traveling between Nat and Happy. They obviously were the only ones with the whole picture.

“What someone _needs_ is to get that kid an applesauce or some shit,” Sam offered. That was going to be a _thing,_ Rhodey could tell.

But he was hung up on something else.

“He has a _room_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there seems to be a consensus that Rhodey met Tony at MIT, but I'm not sure where that came from. In the comics they met as POWs, I believe, and in the MCU through Rhodes' work as liaison. I went with the MCU official story for this, just to try something a little different. Hope it works! 
> 
> As always, comments, questions, insights, corrections or comments are welcome.


	3. Peter: part one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter: Parts one & two were written as a single chapter, but it was a bit on the long side. I cut it into two chapters just so it'd be a little more negotiable.

Tony’s first cogent thought was _Peter._

He wasn’t sure why. He came to slowly, slumped against the back wall of his cell, and he kept his eyes closed as he tried to follow the vague sense of worry that came with the thought. Was Peter alright? He couldn’t exactly remember how he’d gotten here—it was all a blur of nauseous movement and fractured confusion—but he didn’t think he’d gotten as far as Queens. Now he was God knows where, somewhere with Cap, so probably somewhere in the Mediterranean, if he was forced to guess. The kid should be fine.

These people were after him, apparently to bait the trap for Cap. He had no idea why _they_ thought it would work, but it had admittedly panned out well for them. Them… Hydra, the man had said. Did he know that when he was taken? He thought he had. Tony inhaled deeply, and took stock of himself as he exhaled. He wasn’t injured, only cold and very hungry. That could wait, though.

Hydra. If he’d known it was them, he’d have sent Friday a lockdown signal, just in case it was him or his resources they were after. That was moot, apparently. No one had bothered him, barely even spared him a glance in the hours—days?—he’d been here. Tracing back and piecing together what he’d heard, it seemed fairly obvious that they’d been after Cap’s healing capabilities. (That made his chest tighten with worry again, but he pushed it aside. The kid was _fine_.) Trying to create some passive vaccine, which probably actually meant they were trying to create some deadly disease, maybe even a pandemic. Hadn’t they already killed Hydra, several times now?

If one head is cut off… Tony supposed that he couldn’t claim he hadn’t been warned.

So that was one problem.

The housing unit for his suit—or the fact that it was gone, rather—was another. Feeling around the edge of his chest he could feel jagged edges where it used to be. No doubt they hadn’t known what it was, and like the morons they were decided to smash instead of _learn._ Idiots.

The cells they were in were a third problem. The bars were reinforced and double-slated carbonite steel alloy, probably cut with at least titanium because Cap could have dented them, otherwise. They would be utterly immovable to Tony, so he concerned himself more with the locks. They would have to be electrical. Anything mechanical would be either ineffective or too heavy for a non-enhanced to operate. He had very little to work with, but… he pinned down a fleeting thought about the toilet. It was stainless steel, wasn’t it? He could work with that.

Had he run the Nanny’s Out lockdown? Pepper would figure it out. Sooner or later she’d find the kid, and he’d be able to unlock Fri. That was one problem less. The company and the kid were taken care of. He’d have liked to formally introduce him to everyone, see their reactions when they realize how smart, and capable, and how unlike Tony he was… Missing all those firsts stung. Deeply.

Tony opened his eyes.

Cap was slumped against the glass, which Tony gathered was there to contain the disease he was currently fighting. Whatever it was, it was gruesome. He was covered in sweat, shivering hard enough to pull at his arm, which was still caught in that sickening contraption. Every few moments he coughed, the sound tinny and painful, red-tinged saliva dripping from his mouth onto his lap. At least the horrible swelling around his neck had receded somewhat, though some of the visible boils on his arms and face seemed ready to burst.

Tony shivered and looked away.

This wasn’t how he’d wanted Steve to suffer.

Tony pushed himself to stiff feet, and stumbled to the toilet, a plan already forming as he worked.

~*~

Peter wasn’t actually angry over the stupid protocol. Obviously, he didn’t love it; it was hard enough facing the Avengers with the disadvantages of age and inexperience, he hardly needed another handicap thrown into the mix. That hadn’t been cool.

But he _was_ angry. He was angry that Mr. Stark was missing, and that no one had even known until he’d raised the alarm. He was angry that they had no leads, and that every minute that passed felt like it was sealing Tony’s doom.

Peter was angry because he was sure that if anything happened to Mr. Stark, he’d be… perfectly fine. At first, he’d be sad. He’d be fucking broken; but he’d pick himself up and he’d fight through and focus on school, and he’d be okay. It was what he did. And he was _tired of it_.

He didn’t want to have to cope with another—person—leaving. It wasn’t fair that just because he was strong enough to handle it, he was expected to, again and again and again. Ned’s _four_ grandparents lived within 8 blocks of him. MJ got to pretend she was indifferent to her dad. When Flash’s abuela died the school had given the class a morning off so they could visit with him during his time of need.

It wasn’t like he begrudged them their families—he really, really didn’t. Peter was happy they had people. He just didn’t understand why everyone else got to keep theirs, while he needed to keep getting punched in the gut and pretending like it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t fair. He’d come to accept that fact that he’d never have someone in that capacity, not fully. He’d never know what it was like to just… freefall and know someone would catch you, or to just collapse on someone without having to apologize for overstepping.

He had May, but he was responsible for her, and he couldn’t expect her to be there for him, not as Spider-Man. And he had Mr. Stark, mostly for the Spider-Man stuff, but he couldn’t expect _him_ to just be there for the Peter Parker stuff, except in small bites—stolen moments, and momentary shared jokes.

The thought that Mr. Stark was teasing him maybe from beyond the grave was too much. He didn’t understand how Natasha could laugh at what might be Mr. Stark’s last little jab at Peter, he didn’t understand how _he_ was supposed to be anything other than livid at the unfairness of meeting Colonel Rhodes and Pepper Pots when Tony wasn’t there. And what was worse—he couldn’t afford to get angry, not when there was so much work left to do. He removed himself from them, and came up here where he could push down on all of that, and focus. Because maybe it _wasn’t_ too late.

He spread his books out on his bed, and asked Karen to take him through the math one more time. He was sure that he could hone Tony’s search algorithms if he could get a slightly better handle on how they worked. He wasn’t trying to learn the math, just to understand what it required. He knew that if he could determine the missing variables, he could get Karen, or maybe Friday, to run a much more focused search.

He awoke curled up atop the covers. The books were still spread open at the foot of the bed. He sat up, his eyes feeling somehow tight inside his face. He glanced at the clock—he’d slept for almost four hours.

“Yeah?” He croaked, hoping whoever was knocking—on second thought, based on the slight whirring it was Colonel Rhodes—could hear him. He blinked himself further awake, and rolled off the bed as Colonel Rhodes came in.

“Hey, kid.” He took in Peter’s disheveled look and the books on the bed, and came to the right conclusion.

“I’m glad you slept some. Breakfast and mission update in twenty minutes. You know where the kitchen is?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Peter nodded, combing a hand through his hair.

Rhodes nodded, almost to himself. “Good, good,” he muttered absently. He looked around the room, then added, “You have what you need to shower? The essentials? We got extra.” He looked at Peter as though it was a test, though Peter couldn’t imagine what he was testing. It wasn’t like he’d stocked this room himself. Mr. Stark had taken care of all of that.

“I’m all set,” Peter shrugged, and Colonel Rhodes nodded again.

“Good,” he repeated, and turned to leave, then changed his mind and turned back. His braces hummed with the doubled-back movement. “Listen, kid, I’m sorry about last night. You just took us all by surprise.

“If you’re on Tony’s team, you’re on our team. You know that, right?”

Peter wished he wasn’t just standing in the middle of the room. He wished for anything to busy himself with, to compel him to look away, or to busy his hands. But there was nothing, so he just nodded, and blinked away tears as they tried to form. Tony’s team. They _would_ be enough.

“Um, yeah. Yeah, thanks,” Peter whispered, and forced a smile that must have looked, well, forced.

“Alright, then. Shower, we’ll see you downstairs in twenty.” This time he made it out the door before he turned back. “Oh, and Parker? You gotta push back with Sam. Nat says you know how.”

When Peter arrived in the kitchen, feeling fresher after a shower and wearing a new tee he’d never seen before and didn’t get (it said _Thunderstruck,_ but there was a guitar on it instead of a hammer), he understood what Rhodes had meant. It started with humming. Peter’s back was turned on Sam, who was sitting alone in the kitchen. When he turned back with his coffee in hand, Wilson smiled at him with irritating sweetness, then said, “Hey, Friday, why don’t you play that song. I just can _not_ get it out of my head!”

And Friday obligingly began playing the song he’d been humming. It was shrill and childish and brimming with 80s’ kitsch, and the only words Peter could make out—they were repeated often enough—were _Muppet babies._

It was too surreal to get annoyed about. Peter laughed in disbelief. “You composed a _song_ about me?”

Sam shook his head in satisfied superiority, which actually _was_ annoying. “Not me. Found it, on YouTube. Knew that Muppet Baby sounded familiar, our little Muppet Baby.”

“Ah,” Peter said, and pulled out his phone. He typed in a command for Karen to relay to Friday, and took a seat across from Sam. The table was set with take-out breakfast foods, and he helped himself.

The song ended, and Sam, in between sips of his coffee, gleefully asked Friday to play it again. “You’ll need a permission code to execute that command, Captain Wilson,” Friday responded, her tone all business.

Sam narrowed his eyes at Peter, whose eyes were wide with innocence. He shook his head to indicate he _had no idea_ what that was about.

“And can you issue me the permission code?”

“Yes, I can, Captain,” Friday said, and Sam visibly relaxed. “It’s _Peter says I can._ ”

Sam stiffened again in his seat. “C’mon, you can’t do childish shit like that,” he protested, and Peter made sure his own smile was infused with gently confused smugness.

“Doesn’t matter,” Wilson said with determination. “Friday, play that song again. Peter says—aw, fuck.” He sounded genuinely disappointed. “You ruined it.”

Wilson rose to refill his coffee as Natasha and Colonel Rhodes came into the kitchen.

When they were all settled with their coffee and food, Colonel Rhodes explained that Friday had been able to process a list of possible hideouts where Mr. Stark and Captain America were being held. Except no one was calling him that—it was either Cap or Rogers. Must be that whole ‘war criminal’ thing, Peter supposed.

These hideouts were all over the world, and they were going to leave, immediately, to begin checking them out. Peter was all for that. The sooner they could find Mr. Stark, the better.

“Happy took a security team to get Tony’s car,” Rhodes was saying, “he’ll be a while getting back. He said you’re clear to go on missions, but you had to be back in school on Monday. What’s Monday?”

Peter kept his eyes on Colonel Rhodes, and vowed to ignore whatever Sam was going to say in reaction. “School. Regents. Well, winter Regents. I’m taking them early so I can take AP classes in the spring.”

“What Regents?” Peter was shocked out of honoring his vow. There was nothing but curiosity in Wilson’s question.

“Uh, Physics.” Peter folded his arms, in anticipation of the inevitable demeaning comment. He could think of a few, himself. _I have to be back from Avenging in time for my Regents_ sounded stupidly childish, even to him.

But Sam huffed a sympathetic laugh and said, “Sucks to be you, kid.”

Even though he knew that was the nicest thing Sam had said to him since they’d met, it made his skin crawl. Peter didn’t know why. “ _Peter,_ ” he corrected coldly, then turned to address Colonel Rhodes.

“Uh, we should pack through till Monday?”

Rhodes ran a hand over his short-cropped hair, and the weariness and worry were so palpable Peter regretted addressing Sam at all. He was so much not what mattered right now.

“Yeah. Pack warm, through Monday. Everyone,” he added, including Sam and Natasha in his look. “It’s going to be a busy few days.”

They dispersed, then, to gather what they’d need for the upcoming mission. Peter was on his way back from the lab and the kitchen, extra vials of web-fluid and a couple of juice-boxes in hand, when Nat caught up to him. She was apparently on her way back from the armory, judging by smell of gunpowder rising from her very-full black bag.

“Hey, Peter,” she called to him, and he waited her to catch up. They continued walking back toward the living area.

“I’ve heard bits and pieces from Happy and Rhodey, but how are you?”

Peter swallowed at the unexpected constriction in his throat. He hadn’t been expecting to be asked that. “I’m fine,” he answered, and offered Nat a small smile as though to prove it.

She stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Peter.”

He turned to fully face her. “Nat, really, I’m _fine._ ”

Her speculative look caused _him_ to look away, which was totally unfair. When she began walking, she changed the subject.

“You’re okay with handling Sam? He’s a good guy, but he has a… an adjustment period. You can’t let him get under your skin.”

“I think so,” Peter said, and stopped outside the room Nat was using. “Colonel Rhodes told me the same thing, this morning. That I needed to push back.”

She nodded, like she supported that advice. Then she tilted her head in query. “That reminds me. Have you been calling Rhodes _Uh_?”

Her humor was tangible, and Peter felt himself flush. He hadn’t thought anyone had noticed. How could he possibly say that yes, he had been calling the Colonel that, because they hadn’t been formally introduced, and he knew he was being too formal, but until told otherwise, he couldn’t just—what? Call him by his first name, like they were friends? By his last name, like they were colleagues? He was Mr. Stark’s best friend, and being overly casual would be more embarrassing than being called out for avoiding his name altogether. At least it was Nat, and not Sam.

She took pity on him, and spoke again before Peter could decide how to answer that. “Rhodey,” she said decisively. “You’re Tony’s… You’re one of us, now,” she changed direction instead, “and we all call him Rhodey. It’s not presumptuous. He won’t mind.”

“No, he won’t,” a muffled voice called out, and Peter realized that Colonel Rhodes’—Rhodey’s—room was just across from Natasha’s. A moment later the door opened, and Rhodey’s head popped out. “You two about ready? Wheels up as soon as you can get there.”

~*~

Peter had never been so tired in his life.

They’d raided what felt like millions of hideouts in eleven countries over three days, flitting from the Levant to Europe and back again, trying to conserve daylight as they zipped through time-zones while Friday issued her next best guess as to where Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers were being held.

They’d started out in Jordan, and only when the jet landed in an abandoned industrial lot did Peter realize part of him had been expecting sitar music and trains of camels. The gleaming metropolis that greeted them at a distance made his arms twitch in anticipation of swinging from its shining buildings over the lower stone edifices. 

“The building we’re looking for is twelve-and-a-half kilometers that way,” Rhodey pointed, and Peter slumped a little when he noted it was in the opposite direction of the city. Next time, Amman, he thought a little sadly, and turned in the direction Rhodes was pointing.

He could see some smaller neighborhoods clustered together that way, but it was mostly desert, expansive, beautiful, and colorful for all it was nothing more than piles of sand. “How do we get twelve-and-a-half kilometers that way?” Peter asked. They were all geared up, but he and Nat were standing very much flightless outside the jet.

“We double up. Nat, why don’t you go with Sam, and Peter, you can hop up on me.” Rhodey crouched a little, as though to allow Peter to climb on his back.

“No freaking way,” Peter said, taking a step back. Then remembering who he was talking to, added, “please?”

Rhodey stood up. “Kid, you don’t have a harness like Nat,” he pointed to where she was already clipping herself to Sam’s chest, “so barring any better ideas…?”

“I’ll hitch a ride, on a web. We’ve done that before, in Germany.” Peter hoped he sounded reasonable, because man, did he not want to ride piggy-back. He was barely living down Muppet Baby as it was.

“And what happens when your arms get tried? I’m not risking you falling to your death, kid.”

Peter laughed, then realized that Rhodey was being serious. “I’m _Spider-Man,_ ” he shook his head, and held his arms out to demonstrate—he was wearing the suit, and everything. “My arms don’t _get_ tired.”

He thought that ride was going to be the most thrilling part of his day. The air was warm in the mild winter, the view the most unobstructed he’d ever seen in his life, and if he didn’t think about it, he could imagine it was a different armor he was flying with. Rhodey slowed down and began his descent, and as soon as Peter thought it was safe, he vaulted to the ground with a series of flips and a delighted whoop.

“Okay, I admit that _looked_ cool,” Rhodey’s straight face came at an effort, Peter could tell, “but simmer down. This place is knee-deep in illegal genetic experiments, and it’s been on our radar for some time now. We expect there to be some armed guards, mostly scientists, some management. How are we splitting up?”

The question was directed at Natasha, and she answered immediately, like she’d already given it some thought. “I’ll take Spider-Man. I’ve seen him in a fight, I can work around him. We’ll go in on foot, you guys give us a minute, then do an air sweep to pick off anyone we missed.”

“We’re gonna miss someone?” Peter asked.

Nat’s lips quirked.

Peter grinned, realized that Rhodey and Sam couldn’t see it, and gave them a thumbs-up, instead. Then he followed Natasha to the wide-set doors of the single-story building.

She stood to the side of the doorway, and gestured for Peter to do the honors.

He _thwipped_ two webs to the jamb casings, took a few steps back till the webs were nice and taut, then launched himself feet-first at the doors. “Batter up!” he cried, and the next eight minutes were the most amazing blurred memories he had.

He landed only long enough to leap back up, taking in the main floor as he twisted mid-air. He webbed a support-beam and pulled himself to cling to it, high above the ground. It was a small building, and he could see all of it from where he perched. No equipment, just desks and laptops. A pretty fancy coffee maker, too. Natasha was just coming in, and the guys who manned this joint were all rushing toward the doors. Peter leapt down to her side.

“Did you see how many there were?” She had a taser-gun in hand.

“A bunch,” Peter answered, webbing a gun to a wall as he advanced further into the workspace.

“Can you—” Natasha tased a man, pushed him into another, then dipped to sweep the leg from under a brute of a woman advancing on her, ”—be more specific than that?”

Peter leapt over the man nearest to him, so he was standing in between two attackers. He hit them each with a web from the opposite wrist, then uncrossed them and stepped back. Over their crumpled forms, he shrugged at Natasha. “More than some, less than a lot?”

Natasha ducked, and the guy rushing at her collided firmly with Peter’s fist. “You’re the worst,” she said, and laughed.

They worked their way across the floor, weaving in and out of each other’s ways, sometimes calling a warning, or just taking a shot if the other seemed too preoccupied. It was one of the first time Peter had fought alongside someone who could almost keep up with him, and it felt so right he almost didn’t want it to end.

They reached the back office, a single room with glass walls, where the remaining conscious scientists were holed up, begging not to be hurt. Peter waved at them through the glass, then looked at Nat. “Now what?”

She didn’t answer him directly. “Rhodey? Doesn’t look like they’re here, but you should probably question these guys when you’re through with the air-sweep.”

She turned back the way they’d come, and Peter’s glance followed hers to where War Machine and Falcon were… still at the entrance. They were both in the air, but they hadn’t come more than a couple of feet into the building.

“Wha—What? _Air sweep?_ I’m sorry, Romanoff, are you _patronizing_ us?” Colonel Rhodes raised his faceplate, and began to slowly fly over the immobilized and incapacitated personnel of the small facility. “That was like the Russian ballet, if Tchaikovsky had a psychotic twin brother.”

“A soul-moving production of Arachnid Lake,” Sam supplied, and landed heavily, contracting his wings.

“God, that sounds terrifying,” Nat said, and moved aside to let Rhodes past.

“It was.” Sam pinned Peter with a look he couldn’t exactly read through the man’s aviator goggles. Peter moved aside, as well, to allow War Machine to bust open the glass room, and begin interrogating the scientists.

They knew nothing, and neither did the arms dealers, geneticists, engineers, wackos, and hacks in the next three facilities they raided that day, the four they raided in shifts that night, or the eight the following day. It seemed like no one knew anything, but Mr. Stark was still missing and Cap was still AWOL, and there was no other option than to keep knocking on Hydra doors.

Peter hated that his thoughts were running clichéd, but he honestly wasn’t sure where they were anymore. There was snow on the ground and the temperature was below zero, so he assumed somewhere in Europe. There were no people about this early on a Saturday this deep into a forest, but he supposed that was normal. _He_ certainly wouldn’t be out and about if this wasn’t their absolute last lead on possible Hydra bases.

He rubbed at his eyes, then pulled his mask down. He needed to be _with it_. He could be exhausted tomorrow. Today they needed to find Mr. Stark.

Around him, he could see the others were tired, as well. Sleeping in shifts on a jet hadn’t done any of them any favors; irritability was high, the looming cost of failure higher. Mr. Stark had been missing for over three days, and Peter didn’t need Rhodey’s worried looks or Nat’s deliberately unworried ones to know that was _bad_. In the end, he wasn’t sure if it was the tiredness or the worry that led them straight into the ambush.

His first clue that it might be a trap was the cartoonish little man in thick glasses who appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and said, “Ah, you’ve walked right into my trap.”

Belatedly—and at this point it was a hindrance—Peter’s warning sense flared, making him spin around to see dozens of soldiers come out from behind and even up in the trees, surrounding them entirely. He turned again, looking for a break in the wall of muzzles pointing at them.

“Any chance you clowns are just here to take us to Galadriel?” Peter ventured, and saw that Colonel Rhodes stepped a little closer to Sam. Peter followed his lead, and stepped a little closer to Nat. The little cartoon said (Peter’s warning tingle was consuming him whole, it felt like every single nerve was clamoring for attention and he was ready to move before the order was completely out) “Fire at will.”

He grabbed Nat and leapt straight up, bullets flicking up snow and dirt where they’d been standing. Peter aimed high and webbed a nearby tree, twisting to land on it feet-first. The bullets followed them, chased them, really, and the next few minutes became a totally _insane_ sprint, running sideways from tree trunk to tree trunk, twisting in tight spirals out of the way of bullets before continuing the mad, sideways dash above the heads of the shooters, occasionally correcting course with a well-placed web. To her amazing, incredible, _fucking awesome_ credit, Natasha managed to keep her body taut so he wasn’t just carrying deadweight, and once she saw what Peter was doing she was able to keep up. She braced herself against him, landing with him on the trees and throwing her weight into the leaps at just the right moment, adding to their momentum.

They landed on an evergreen tree, and Peter paused there. The bullets had stopped. Natasha vaulted herself up onto a branch, and Peter climbed up after her until they were both obscured by a mess of the leaves.

“That… that’s more than a bunch,” Peter breathed heavily.

“Yeah,” she said. “Might even be more than a lot. We need to get back to the oth—” She stopped herself abruptly, and a moment later Peter registered what she’d heard. Boots, and movement that thought it was silent. Peter looked down, directly into several barrels.

“Time to go!” He panicked, and Widow held on to him as he jumped out of the tree. They _thwipped_ from tree to tree, but this time the attackers followed, or they met new pockets of soldiers that that took up trying to shoot at them. Natasha shot back, thankfully a better shot than these guys were. By the time they landed on a tree that wasn’t surrounded by Hydra guys with machine guns, Peter was _way_ out of breath and a little incredulous that he wasn’t sporting any bullet holes.

“You okay?” Natasha removed an empty clip from her handgun and replaced it.

Peter threw his head back against the tree trunk, but gave a thumbs-up. “You?”

Her clip clicked into place. “We should get back to Sam and Rhodey. Do you guys copy?”

“Copy, Romanoff,” Rhodes’ voice came over comms, and he was as out of breath as Peter was. Peter could hear the sounds of a fight. “Widow, can you get the kid back to the jet? This is going way more pear-shaped than we thought. We’re totally surrounded. Wilson, at my four o’cl—”

“––Or,” Peter tapped his earpiece to disable his comms for a moment, “ _you_ go back to the jet, and I go help Rhodey and Wilson.” He looked up at Natasha, wishing he could take off his mask. She needed to see he was dead-serious about this. “I can’t fly that thing, and they don’t sound like they have a lot of time. They need backup, like, _now_.”

Natasha studied him. “Can you find them?” She eventually asked.

“Yes! Yeah, definitely. Friday already marked their location on my HUD. They’re like a quarter of a mile that way,” he pointed over his right shoulder.

Natasha sighed lightly and bit her lip in consideration. She looked into the forest, but after a moment whipped back to Peter, her eyes laser-focused. Peter slammed his comms back on.

“—down! Widow, are you hearing this? Rhodey’s down, they fired something at his suit, they killed it. He’s too heavy, I can’t—oh, nu-uh, you little shit,” Sam said, and gunshots followed.

“Go,” Nat said, nodding over his shoulder.

Peter went. Swinging alone was much faster, and in less than a minute he was barreling feet-first into the circle of soldiers closing in on Rhodey and Sam.

Wilson was engaged in hand-to-hand over the War Machine armor, Rhodey presumably still locked inside.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Sam bit out, twisting and extending his wings to knock several assailants down when they came too close. “You were told to get lost!” The wings retracted, and he grabbed a gun from one of the fallen soldiers.

“That’s—you’re being so mean!” Peter whined dramatically, punching one guy into several others. “It’s just like prom night all over again!” He said, and smirked when he saw Sam somehow get angrier. There were literally zero parts about this that were funny, but… the alternative was to come to terms right now with how badly they were screwed. He webbed a guy who was a little further off, and bracing himself against the ground wielded him in a large arc over his head, then used the dude’s prone form to bowl down everyone in the semi-circle in front of them.

It bought them a short reprieve.

Reinforcements were already coming up over the horizon, weapons drawn. Someone launched a freaking grenade, which Peter webbed onto a tree a little further off. He and Wilson hunched as it exploded.

“Now what?” Peter bend down and lifted the War Machine armor, and _man._ “What’s this thing made of, osmium?” He grunted as he supported the armor into a standing position. “I’m gonna need room to build up enough velocity to swing with this armor,” Peter said, and adjusted his grip around its midsection. “It’s heavy.”

“Osmi—Parker, what are you even—just, stand back, I’m going to make you some room.” The Falcon wings expanded, and Sam leapt into the air. “Time to sweep up the toy soldiers.”

He took off, and from where he stood Peter could see him aim at the rushing horde of Hydra henchmen. If Falcon could give him enough space, enough time, Peter could web up to _that_ tree, and from there he’d hav—

The sense of _danger!_ was so acute Peter thought he was going to be sick. He physically swallowed back on something disgusting as he craned his neck to try and pinpoint the threat. But everywhere he looked was nothing, absolutely _nothing._ The circle of collapsed soldiers remained distressingly still, and the reinforcements were still distant. There were no rustling leaves to betray a hidden assassin hiding in the trees, nothing but the low hum…

The low hum of generators. Peter could see now that the reinforcements weren’t distant, they were keeping their distance. The hum intensified, a sheer blue energy—something— formed a circle at the exact perimeter the reinforcements were maintaining. It remained in place, but the hairs on Peter’s arms were standing on end with the crackle of energy emanating from the invisible walls that rose from it. Trees split lengthwise, long logs falling back towards the forest and inwards towards Peter. He ducked and dodged the falling debris. The forcefield rose ever higher, and according to Friday’s readings it began to arc inwards. Upwards. They were being enclosed in a dome that could slice through trees, and Sam was—

“Wilson! Falcon! You need to come down!” Peter yelled, locating Sam above him. He was right in the path of the closing dome, but he was oblivious to it. Peter was not willing to _just stand there—_

He shot a web at Wilson, and that slowed him down, but not enough. He cursed through the comms as he dropped a few inches, but not enough.

“I’m so sorry Colonel Rhodes, I know you wanted to take Marsha to the dance,” Peter said as he awkwardly readjusted the armor, so he was hugging it beneath the armpits. He shot a second web at Wilson’s wings, and focused his everything—his will and his strength and his back and _please God, let this work, I can’t be responsible for—_

It worked.

Falcon cursed again with words Peter wasn’t supposed to know as one of his wings contracted. The force of Peter’s _yank_ pulled him into a tight spiral, thankfully away from the energy dome, which had zapped shut with a menacing purr.

Peter had just enough time to feel overpowered by relief before Sam, and War Machine, crashed into him and knocked him right the hell out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy for thoughts, comments, insights, and snack ideas.


	4. Peter: part two

“Ow. Ow, ow, _ow_ —”

Peter had the distinct displeasure of waking up to someone electrocuting him. The suit was taking most of the charge, and it was more a discomfort than actual pain, but he wanted it to stop. He tried to push the person away, but his arms pulled against chains that held him to the wall.

“Good, he’s with us,” an unfamiliar voice said, and the stinging stopped.

Peter opened his eyes just in time to see the man reach a hand to his neck and yank at his mask. The mask remained firmly in place, but the man seemed to suffer a small jolt, himself.

“God _fuckit_!” He cursed, pulling his hand back and cradling it against his fancy-looking suit. Across his HUD, Peter could see a notification which took him a moment to understand. _Child-lock engaged._ He exhaled heavily. That didn’t even make any _sense,_ he thought. A child-lock opens from the outside, not… Whatever. He had other worries.

On either side of him where Sam and Rhodey. Beyond Sam, next to a low door, their suits were heaped in a pile of braces and equipment. Wilson himself looked more-or-less okay. A huge gash ran from his temple all the way down his cheek, much longer than it was deep. He was standing, hunched, since the chains that held him to the wall didn’t allow him his whole height.

Rhodes was… He seemed physically unhurt. At least—not more than he’d started out. But his chains were set a little higher than Peter’s. He couldn’t comfortably reach the ground in a sitting position, but he couldn’t stand, either. That left him suspended from his arms, his legs in a cruel crumple beneath him. He was fighting with tired muscles to relieve the strain on his shoulders, but he was buying himself short reprieves from agony, at best.

The man who had tried to unmask him was glaring at Peter as though he’d personally done something attack him, which was pretty unfair, all things considered. “This changes _anything,_ ” the man hissed, and turned towards the door. “Helmut will become here soon, anyway,” he added and left, slamming the heavy metal door behind him.

“What’s his problem?” Peter asked, sitting up more fully from where he was slumped. He felt like a punching bag. His head hurt, his face hurt, and every breath felt like it was breaking new ground through concrete in his lungs.

“Jesus, thank God, kid,” Rhodes said, and Peter could hardly believe he could look relieved, on top of his obvious pain. “You were out for _hours,_ we kinda thought you were dead.”

On his other side, Sam answered his question. “He’s just salty cause he keeps getting zapped whenever he tries to short-out your suit and take off the mask. Did they grab Romanoff?”

Peter shrugged. “Last I saw her she was headed back towards the jet.” 

“Well, let’s hope she gets here before Helmut—”

But the door opened.

A man—presumably Helmut—backed into the room, wearing a plasticky-looking over-suit and wheeling a cart covered in a white sheet. He closed the door gently. With a flourish, he pulled the sheet off the cart to reveal an array of implements. Some were gleaming and sharp, some were made for crude blunt force, and some were both—harsh tools crusted with dried blood and what looked like pieces of skin.

Peter swallowed and averted his eyes.

The man caught the movement.

“Good. You know where this is going, little spider,” he said in perfect English. “Your suit won’t protect you from me, and I’m glad you know that.” His voice was deep, warm, almost caring, if not for the chilling promise that underlay his tones.

“My research tells me you’re quite talkative,” he continued. “That’s wonderful. I think I’ll cut out your tongue, and force you to keep talking. Blubbering always amuses me, very greatly.” He smiled, in fond memory of previous amusements.

Peter could feel his eye widen, his breath catch in his chest. That was… graphic. He really believed Helmut had done that before.

“Yo, Helmet, you done picking on skinny-two-shoes?” Sam made an effort to stand at his full height, and Helmut turned to him.

“Don’t worry.” Helmut walked until he was level with Wilson, though he was careful to stay out of range of his legs. “I’ve given some thought to you, as well. I think I’d like to learn spine-grafting. I’m a big fan of practice-based learning. And you—” he walked in the other direction, and rested his hands on his knees so he could bend down to look Rhodey in the eye. “I desperately want to see what happens when I cut off your legs. Bit by bit by bit,” he said in a song-songy voice, and smiled again at Rhodes’ _fuck you_.

Then he turned his back on them, and made a show of examining his tools in delighted uncertainty of which one to choose.

“I would be a sloppy man of science, of course, if I didn’t sharpen my instruments. We do need at least one of you to talk… Well, to communicate. I suppose grunting is fine too.”

He picked up a whetstone and began to systematically draw each scalpel and knife across it, all the time keeping up idle chatter of what he was going to do to them, and in what order, with each tool.

Peter did what he should have done the moment he woke up, and tested the strength of his chains. He pulled once, twice at the chain that bound his left wrist and—

It came free from the wall with a loud rattle and a _crack_ of crumbling stone.

“Shit!” Sam exclaimed loudly, and none of the three prisoners moved. Peter didn’t dare _breath_. Helmut didn’t turn to them, although he _had_ heard the commotion.

“Indeed. It is frustrating to know that we were prepared for your strength. You may battle and rattle those chains all you like, they will remain firm. I wonder if I should disembowel the spider first, or save that for last?” He idly pondered.

Peter turned to Rhodey, who looked back at him in wide-eyed shock. _What the fuck was that?_ He mouthed angrily at Peter. Peter raised his shoulders. He hadn’t been expecting that to work, and he _really_ hadn’t been expecting their torturer to ignore it. He turned to Sam, who wasn’t breathing, either, but he did pointedly eye-ball the other chain.

Right.

So Helmut talked over the rustle of Peter breaking his chains, determined to maintain his intimidation routine with his back turned on them. He flexed the giant saw and chuckled at the _fowowow_ sound it made, and didn’t register Wilson’s small groan as he stood up straight, his own chains still attached to the wall, but no longer to the cuffs around his wrists.

He _finally_ turned around to catch Peter on the wall over Colonel Rhodes’ head, about to break his chains, as well. They locked eyes, and for a few long beats no one said anything.

“This is really awkward,” Peter finally whispered, then launched off the wall to kick the man in the chest. Helmut flew back, straight into Sam who had come around behind him. He punched him in the face, and the man was down.

Peter released Rhodes’ arms, and Sam helped lower him to the ground, straightening his legs beneath him. Up close Peter could see, he could smell the sweat that coated his temples, could hear the small _pop_ s as Rhodes flexed and massaged his shoulders.

Peter pretended not to notice that he needed a minute, and hugging his ribs he moved to stand where Rhodes could see him and Sam without having to move.

“Now what?” He asked. “Do we keep searching this place for Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers? I mean, they seemed kinda prepared for us. They might still be here.” Peter’s glanced landed on the uncovered table of instruments. He wished it hadn’t. Those… those things had been used. And if Mr. Stark was here, and—and Helmut hadn’t been lying in his longwinded speech about how often and how thoroughly he worked, and suddenly it was all too easy to imagine Mr. Stark secured to a wall by chains he couldn’t break, gagging on blood as this freaking _freak_ cut out his—

Wilson extended two fingers to Peter’s face and physically averted his gaze from the cart. “Hey—no. You missed the spiel while you were knocked out. The man from the woods, the little guy who looked like Elmer Fudd? He came in here to chat, earlier. He was very clear that he didn’t have Stark or Cap, and he didn’t know who did. We’ve just been… not as careful as we should have been on our previous raids, and they figured we were coming.”

Peter blinked rapidly, and nodded. He hugged himself a little tighter, despite the pain in his middle, and asked again, “So now what?”

Rhodes gestured for Peter and Sam to help him up. “Now we get the hell out of here, find Nat, and regroup back at the Compound. We can have the authorities clean up this place.”

“How do we get out? That door’s probably guarded, and that’s a load-bearing wall. I can punch through it, but the roof might crash down on us.” Peter didn’t want to actually say it, but his ribs were hurt. At least cracked. He could carry Rhodes, he could carry the suit, and he could fight, but probably not all three. Not now, for sure, and maybe not even on a good day. That armor was _heavy_.

Sam gestured with a nod. “See that door, next to our gear? It’s a door _out.”_

Peter stopped walking, even though it stalled the other two. “You’re kidding.”

Sam wasn’t kidding.

They helped Rhodey put on his braces, which thankfully were powered independently and weren’t affected by whatever killed his suit, Sam packed on his own gear, and they just… left. Peter struggled a bit with the armor, but as soon as they were out of the windowless stone shed, Friday came back online, and she brought Nat with her. Within fifteen minutes and a few rounds of _are you okay_ s they were all safely back on the jet, and the Hydra base was being raided for the second time that day, this time by the local anti-terror agency.

Peter pulled off his mask and leaned his head back. Sam and Rhodey were chatting quietly nearby about what’s next. Once the jet was safely autopiloted, Nat came into the rear, at first exchanging a few words with the older guys, then coming to sit next to Peter, carefully maneuvering around the War Machine armor he’d dropped at his feet. She handed him an ice-pack.

“They roughed you up?”

“What—oh, no. Not at all. They didn’t touch me. Thanks,” he added, lifting up the ice-pack before holding it to his… He wanted to put it everywhere. Natasha guided it to the side of his face.

“Peter, you’re sporting a _very_ black eye, a busted lip, your face is one big bruise, and if I know my injuries, you’ve got some broken ribs.”

Peter winced at the stinging cold of the pack, and moved it to the other side of his face. “They _were_ cracked, I think. Now they’re just sore. I was knocked out most of the time we were missing… No, that’s a good thing, really,” he said as her features shifted into impassive displeasure. He pointed at his own face, to illustrate. “It helped me heal, that’s why the bruises look old. But this was all self-inflicted. Totally my fault.”

“Your _fault_?” Rhodey cut in, wincing as he leaned forward to apply his own ice-pack to a shoulder. “You saved our asses and for your trouble took half a ton of War Machine to the head.”

“Don’t forget about fifteen grams of Falcon,” Peter said, looking to Sam. Was it still pushing back if it was preemptive? In any case, goading Sam was better than the alternative, because the alternative was acknowledging their collective, colossal failure.

“Try a hundred and ninety pounds of pure muscle, baby.”

Peter laughed at the excessive bravado, complete with Sam blowing kisses to his own biceps. Nat smiled, and absently pushed the ice-pack back onto Peter’s eye.

“I’m still the only one here who can knock me out, though.”

That didn’t get the laugh he’d hoped for. Rhodey said, “Yeah, let’s not joke about that, kid. You were out for what, four or five _hours_? That’s at least a serious concussion. You could have _died_ on my watch.”

“I barely could’ve died. At most I’d have needed the Shmoosh Ward,” Peter said, and was met with three worried and unamused looks.

Peter groaned. This, again? It was barely passable from Mr. Stark, and that was only because… It was different, from him. Colonel Rhodes wasn’t responsible for him, and he wasn’t a liability like Rhodey was suggesting. Hell, he’d literally been doing all the heavy lifting. It was so unfair, and yet so quintessentially _him_ that he had to deal with this right now, on top of everything. He didn’t want Rhodes’ sympathy, he didn’t want to be handled with silk gloves, not by someone who wasn’t—Peter inhaled deeply. He didn’t _need_ another grownup to worry about him. He had enough. He still had enough.

“The point is, I’m fine,” Peter explained.

“You’re lying,” Nat said. She, at least, wasn’t dripping with sympathy, or even judgment. Just interest.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not. I dropped it before, but we still have work to do, and we can’t have you building up steam you’re not letting out. Joking about it won’t make you less… Whatever you are. Angry? Upset? You can be those things.”

Peter sat up straight, and dropped the ice-pack. How was she not getting this? He turned so he was facing Nat. “You know what? No, that’s not true. I can’t.”

“Kid,” Rhodey interrupted them, “that might be true at home, or at school, but everyone here? We’re all worried. We’re all upse—no, we’re fucking pissed that we wasted three days and the only thing we have to show for it is that we’re marginally not dead. I know you don’t know us very well, but… You _can_ trust us. If you need to be mad over this clusterfuck situation, be mad.”

Peter hit the empty seat beside him. “Don’t you get it? I _don’t get_ to be mad!”

How could he explain this to them?

“The way I feel, right now?” Peter asked, and looking around for something he could use to demonstrate, he plucked the helmet off the War Machine armor at his feet.

“Whoa—”

“Dude—”

He hadn’t even needed to use both hands; the metal warped, then bent, nearly folded in two. Sam and Rhodey were sneaking looks at him in mock discretion; but not Natasha. Her eyes were squarely on Peter, and he could tell, she was beginning to _see._

“This?” He raised, then tossed the mask back down at his feet, “This isn’t a _fraction,_ it isn’t a _nano_ -part of how terrible I really feel. I’m—” His voice broke, and he considered stopping. He really should, considering how Sam and Rhodey were now looking at one another, at the floor, at anything but him. It made their scrutiny worse. But Natasha… She was the only person in his life who might actually understand. Especially now.

He blinked away at the moisture in his eyes, and started again. “I’m terrified, Nat. And yeah, that makes me angry. Because I’m _sick_ of feeling this way, whenever my aunt goes to the store or when he’s running ten minutes late.” He didn’t need to elaborate on who _he_ was. Nat, at least, knew.

“It’s always, always there, but now it’s been given its own superpowers since Tuesday, and I’m…” Nat’s eyes followed his hand, as he pointed at himself. “If I go out like this, if I take this awful feeling into the field with me, I _will_ kill someone. I’ll crush them. I won’t mean to, but even a fraction of my full strength is way too much if it’s fueled by… This.

“So yeah, I _do_ need to joke, and say I’m fine even when I’m not. Because I don’t _get_ to be angry,” Peter said again. “I get to be sad and I get to pretend I’m not sad. That’s it. I have two options.”

He picked up the ice-pack, and covered his eye with it. It was as good an excuse as any to shut them all out. Leaning back with his eyes closed, he could at least take stock of how badly he embarrassed himself just now. Cause Natasha… She was just sitting there, still looking at him, as far as he could tell. Rhodey and Sam were mouthing whispers to one another. Peter couldn’t make out their words, but he had no doubt it was about him.

Peter scrunched his face in embarrassment. Did he just cry? In front of the Avengers? Did he admit to them, to Nat, how much he worried about Tony? He could practically provide their ridicule himself. They must think he’s so full of himself, to worry about Tony Stark, when Colonel Rhodes, who’d known him forever, was in the same room.

“So how strong _are_ you, anyway? You ripped at those chains like they were ramen noodles,” Sam said from—Peter started, Jeez—right next to him. Peter opened his eyes, and saw that while he was buried in his cloud of self-pity, Natasha and Rhodes had moved to the front of the jet, leaving him alone with Wilson. Great.

Peter shrugged. He was too tired to manage this conversation. “I dunno. Never really tested it. I guess single-digit tonnage is firmly in my comfort zone? More than that I can do, but it’s effort.”

Sam nodded like he’d been expecting that. “Sure, sure. Same, more-or-less,” he added sagely, modestly, as he flexed his own biceps again.

Peter didn’t mean to, but he smiled. Sam could be funny.

“I guess I owe you a _thank you_ for keeping the fight in Germany PG. Looks like you coulda punched through us like wet paper bags,” Sam said, kicking at the armor at their feet. The armor didn’t budge, and Peter didn’t answer. Of-course he hadn’t brought his full strength to that fight. Like he’d risk hurting _Avengers._

“Now, I know I wasn’t the audience for what you were saying before” Sam continued, “but I couldn’t help overhear—just hear me out, okay? First of all, as soon as this mission is done, I’m telling on you to Stark, or to Romanoff, whoever scares you more.”

“Telling on me?” Peter didn’t follow.

“You got PTSD, and you’re advertising it.”

Peter wasn’t even sure exactly what PTSD _was_ , but he knew that it was post-trauma, and he was Spider-Man. He didn’t have trauma, he stopped it. “What? No, I don’t h—”

“Peter,” Sam interrupted him, and maybe it was the use of his name, or maybe the fact that Sam didn’t look like was kidding, not even a little, but it stopped Peter from objecting.

“Peter, I’ve raided 12 buildings with you the last three days. You always find the support points of a structure. I’ve seen you ask Friday to point them out to you. I don’t know what that’s about—not specifically—but I know that behavior. You think it’s helping you control the situation, but that control is leprechaun gold, kid. It’s an illusion, and it disappears when you need it most and least expect it. And it won’t keep the nightmares or the flashbacks away, and those will consume you whole, man.”

Peter glanced sharply up. He _did_ have nightmares, where he tried to breath and just couldn’t, where he tried to stand but more and more floors came crashing down on him, like it had been a skyscraper that collapsed on him instead of a warehouse. Sometimes his dreams repurposed that old 9/11 footage, but he was somehow on the plane and burning and at the center of the collapse all at the same time.

He didn’t know how Sam could have known that. Sam resumed speaking when Peter looked back down.

“So I’m definitely telling, because you don’t need to be buried by that. And… And as for the other thing, well, I can tell you to let it go, live in the moment, have gratitude and all that, but you know that’s bullshit, right?”

Sam actually seemed to wait for him to answer, so Peter nodded.

“Good, cause it _is_ bullshit. It’s hard to live in the moment when you’re all _constant vigilance!_ about the people in your life, I get that. But what you _can_ do is this… If this aunt of yours, or Tony died, and there was a magic button that would erase him from your life? Like you never met. Would you do it?”

Peter thought about that. It would mean one person less to miss, and many less memories of being worried, scared, and angry. He could use less of those.

Peter closed his eyes to walk through the new world this would create. He’d never have known what is was like to have an adult embarrass him. He’d forget what that intense disappointment had felt like, up on that roof. He’d wouldn’t have another blackhole in his chest, because…

Peter covered his face with his hands, aggravating his bruises but also hiding the wetness. He wouldn’t have another blackhole in his chest because he’d forget how he had someone who was his. Who chose him. He’d forget that the smartest man in the world gave him any thought at all—and not out of pity, but because he thought Peter could be _better_ than him in some weird way. He’d forget how close he’d come to having—someone.

“No,” he said, the word muffled by his hands, but resolute, even to his own ears. Of-course he wouldn’t. Peter wished literal strangers got to know the real Tony Stark, because he was amazing. There was no way that the people who actually knew him would—could—forget him. The thought of willfully removing that larger-than-lifeness from his life, from his hypothetical memories, was devastating.

“Why not?”

Peter sat a little straighter and turned toward Sam, wiping at his face as he did so. “Because the good of knowing him outweighs the bad. By—by infinity. I mean, I know this sounds really selfish, but…I like knowing him, you know? It’s crazy and confusing and fun.”

Sam let that hang between them, long enough for Peter to wonder if he was supposed to say something else. But he’d answered Sam’s questions, and he wasn’t sure where they’d been going, and didn’t have anything to add to help them get there. The silence stretched on long enough that Peter finally said, “You’ve read Harry Potter?”

Sam responded like he’d been snapped out of a reverie. He sat back with calculate ease, folded his arms, and said, “Fuck, yes, I’ve read Harry Potter. Badger pride, right here,” he said, tapping his chest over his heart.

Wilson must have read the incredulity on Peter’s face, because he added, “Loyal, strong moral code, smart as a whip.” He paused, then added in a whisper clearly meant to be heard, “ _Ravenclaw snob_.”

From somewhere deep in Peter’s chest, a laugh forced itself out. It was real and surprised and it felt good. Peter could almost forget that he’d had a meltdown just a few minutes ago, and that Sam was indeed stuck here babysitting him, like he’d feared from the beginning.

Except… Wilson didn’t seem to mind it.

Sam used Peter’s shoulder to hoist himself up, then stretched out a kink in his back. “I’m going to get some shuteye on the way home. You should, too.”

Sam breathed deeply and waited for Peter to look up at him.

“Just so we’re clear, I counted being sad, pretending not to be sad, and being crazy and confused and fun. Those are three options, kid.”

He went to the bench opposite Peter, pooled his jacket beneath his head, and closed his eyes.

Peter kept looking at Sam for a while after that.

Three options.

Huh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason (let's not be coy, it's me) the first few chapters posted as x/9, even though there are only 6 chapters. I've corrected that, and I apologize for the typo. 
> 
> Thoughts, insights, comments, all are welcome here!


	5. Tony: part one

Peter rested on the jet. He ate a late lunch at the Compound. He assured Happy he was really okay. He showered. He failed.

He failed. He failed. He failed.

Tony was still out there, and the longer it took to find him the likelier he was either dead or being tortured. And Peter was supposed to—what? Get a good night’s sleep and do a few more practice-tests? Sit his exam while somewhere, some sicko like Helmut was slowly—

Rhodey called an emergency meeting. Peter arrived at the conference room still preoccupied with those thoughts, though it was getting increasingly harder to focus on them. He could feel each blink taking longer, his eyelids peer-pressuring him to let them stay down, and slowly winning because he was outnumbered.

“Friday pinged another location,” Rhodey said, and Peter snapped into attention.

“How is that possible?” Pepper asked. “I thought you said you checked every plausible location in her archives.”

“Apparently, she’d been running a background search and found an _im_ plausible location. Someone wrote her a new search algorithm, and she just got a hit.”

Peter could feel his mouth drop open, his eyes widen, his heart pound faster. He had assumed that what he’d added to the search was garbage, considering it hadn’t returned any results for _days._

The others were leaning slightly forward, in anticipation of what this might mean.

Using the arm not in a sling, Rhodey pulled up a map on his tablet, then he leaned forward so he could see Peter at the far end of the conference room, where he sat against the window. “Since when do you know how to write search algorithms?”

Put on the spot, Peter sputtered. “I didn’t—it was just—uh… Wednesday?”

Natasha looked from him to Rhodey like she didn’t recognize either of them. “Déjà vu,” she muttered. When she noticed the attention was on her, she quickly waved it away. “Never mind,” she said. “Peter, you did this?”

“I didn’t _write_ it,” Peter clarified, looking from her back to Rhodey. Pepper, he could see, was holding herself tautly, her mouth and most of her expression hidden behind her curled fist. Her heart was thumping loudly, her eyes taking him in like he held her life in his hands.

“I just tweaked Mr. Stark’s algorithms, with new parameters. Because of the differentiation of a dual target.”

Happy nodded at him with a sad little smile, while Sam turned in his chair specifically to look at him like he was an idiot.

“Yeah, I did this.” Peter conceded.

“Well, it worked,” Rhodey said, and cast the map as a hologram above the middle of the table. He zoomed out of the blinking dot for perspective.

“Wait,” Natasha stood up to examine it more closely. “I know where that is.”

“I mean, we all do,” Sam said in a reasonable tone. “We’re looking at it on a map.”

Natasha threw a pen at him, which he tried to dodge but didn’t quite manage to.

“I _mean,_ ” Nat pointedly rectified, “that we’ve been there. Or, almost there.”

She turned to Happy. “Remember the Stark Expo, six, seven years ago?"

“Sure,” Happy said. “I was with you at Hammer’s factory.”

"I almost got my ass blown up by Vanko," Rhodey casually supplied.

"Same." Pepper smiled a weak, fond, little smile. "Tony and I were with you at the fair-grounds."

Peter raised his hand. "I almost got fried by a Hammer drone, if that counts."

Sam swiveled in his seat, again, to look at Peter. “Were you even potty-trained seven years ago?”

Peter bit his lip for a moment. He opened his mouth, changed his mind, then started again. “What exactly do you _know_ about human children?” Peter asked Sam, and caught the pen Sam threw at him. 

“Well, if we were all there,” Natasha continued, “You’ll remember that we couldn’t figure out how Vanko got so quickly from Hammer’s place to the Expo. We hypothesized, but we were never able to prove anything. Look,” she said, and rotated the focus on the map.

“This is right between the factory and the Grounds. Probably underground. It _would_ be a perfect place to keep Cap and Tony.”

“You mean to tell me Tony’s _right here?_ He’s been in Queens the _whole time_?” Pepper’s high-pitched disbelief caused Peter to leap off the window. He felt somehow responsible, like he should have known. It was _Queens._ That’s his backyard.

“We had no way of knowing that until just now,” Rhodey apologized. “But now we do, and we can be there in twenty minutes. My suit’s still grounded, but I can fly you all out there and man the jet, even one-handed.” He shrugged one shoulder and surveyed the room.

“Nat, you’ll lead. Sam, you’re our eyes in the air. And Peter—” Rhodey sighed, “I’m sorry to even ask this, but are you—”

“Of course I am.”

“Kid, just…You had a shittier day than the rest of us. You’re still hurt. Are you _sure_ you ca—”

“ _Yes._ ”

Rhodes nodded once. “Alright. Suit up, everyone. Let’s hope this is it. Ten-minute call.”

They were in the air shortly after that. No one except for Rhodey even bothered to take a seat, and soon a conspicuously darkened patch of land stretched below them.

Sam pulled Peter aside while they were waiting for the initial scans to come through. “In about three minutes you’re gonna pull on that mask and you’re gonna be ‘fine,’ but until then, how are you? Really?”

It was a little unfair that Sam was already wearing his aviator goggles. It made it hard to read him, but Peter was surprised that it wasn’t impossible. There was no condescending arm on his shoulder, there was no crack about his age, there was nothing that wasn’t exactly what the question sounded like: concern.

“I’m…” He wasn’t sure how he was. Ever since Rhodey told them of this location, he’d been carefully not thinking. Not about anything. This was beyond a Hail Mary, and if they didn’t find Cap and Tony… Peter could feel the black-hole in his chest expand a little wider, swallow a little more of what he should be feeling right now. But somewhere beneath all that was a distinct, and surprising, lack of desperation. Although his heart still hammered at the thought of Whatever Came _After,_ it couldn’t, he wouldn’t _let_ it erase all the _Befores_. His new, streamlined web-shooters. His internship. All of it.

“I didn’t look up the support beams,” Peter said in way of explanation.

When Natasha gave the word that it was time to move out, Rhodey lowered the jet, and they prepared to jump out onto the highest roof of Hammer’s factory, which would be their entry point.

Peter made sure to stand close to Sam as the cargo-ramp lowered. The wind rushed in, deafening and thrilling and invigorating. Peter wasn’t sleepy, not anymore. He pulled his mask down, and leaned closer to Sam. “You were right!” He shouted over the rush of air. “I _totally_ wet myself at the Stark Expo!”

“Ha, I knew it!” Sam yelled back, pointing an accusatory finger.

“And that’s _still_ cooler than being the only one who wasn’t there,” Peter countered, and he didn’t wait for Sam to answer. He dove out of the jet, tumbling and twisting and spinning to the rooftop below with the grace of an Olympic diver, cheering with the familiar rush of flying, of doing, of being Spider-Man.

They were going to get Mr. Stark, and it was time to be _fine._

_~*~_

Tony kept busy. It was the only way he knew how to be. He studied to lock mechanism, he stripped the toilet, working his nails down to bloody quicks, and then used the parts to dig in his leg for the nanochips and bioelectrical receptors he used to control the Bleeding Edge armor.

He had a plan.

There was no way to be sure how long he and Rogers had been in their nondescript, overly bright cages, but he could fathom a guess, the hours he’d been locked out of his own brain by a drug-induced stupor notwithstanding. Cap had cycled through five diseases, and each one took around 12 hours from the time he’d been infected to peak and then ebb from his system. So three, maybe four days, then.

They were about ten hours into this most recent cycle. The Doc had just taken the final sample of Cap’s blood, and Rogers hadn’t so much as flinched when they grabbed his arm and took several vials to study, distill, and synthesize. This last round had been worse than the others. It seemed somehow a combination of several of the other diseases, making Rogers sweat and vomit and swell and bleed. Along with the wound in his arm, which was growing pungent, Cap was a wraith of his strength, of his presence.

Tony had spent a lot—in fact an unconscionable amount—of time imagining how Steve Rogers would pay for what he’d done and for what he’d tacitly condoned. This wasn’t even close to what he’d envisioned. He’d wanted… He wanted Steve to _see_. To understand his betrayal as viscerally as Tony had felt it. To be ashamed.

Instead Tony got a front row seat to the disintegration of Steve Rogers, and he hated it. He hated that he had been the bait to lure Steve here, he hated that the only time they fed him was because Steve had grabbed one of their scientists by the throat and hadn’t let go until Tony had eaten something, and he hated that he was going to die here while he helped Steve _fucking_ Rogers escape.

Because that was the plan. It was the only plan. His sad little device would only be powerful enough to short out one of their cell-grids, and it _had_ to be Cap’s, and it would be, just as soon as the man recovered enough from his most recent brush with pestilence, or whatever the fuck they’d done to him. There was no way in hell he could be left in Hydra’s hands. The bio-weapons they’d be capable of… And besides, Rogers had a far better chance of actually fighting his way out, once free from his cell. It had to be him.

It was fair, in a sense. He’d only come here to save Ton—

Tony stopped calibrating the device.

He had been the _bait_. Rogers had only come because he thought he was meeting Tony, which meant he’d been contacted on the burn-phone.

That’s why Tony’s thoughts kept returning to the kid. These people had no way of knowing Tony had that phone on him, or that the only number on it would be Steve’s. They grabbed him on his way to Queens, because they thought he’d be meeting with an enhanced person _from_ Queens.

His breaths were coming in shallower, and he set down the device before he dropped it, falling back onto the floor as soon as his hands were free. How had it taken him so long to connect those dots? Those sickening jaws that held Rogers’ arm, the experiments, these cages… They were meant for Spider-Man, not for Rogers.

The weight of culpability was crushing Tony’s airways. He had come so close, so terrifyingly close to the one thing he’d die, the one thing he’d _kill_ for. Instead of Steve, it was meant to be the kid, his—Tony was meant to watch them rip him apart and mine him for profit, and Peter was meant to watch Tony wither and weaken and starve to death. He couldn’t breathe.

The whole reality of it impressed itself upon Tony’s mind before he could shut it down. How Peter would suffer, but pretend he was fine; how he would resist any attempt of Tony’s to help him escape, if it meant Tony was left behind; how Peter would cave, in the end. Tony would force him to move on, and it would take away another part of Peter, another sliver of self-worth that fractured every time he lost someone.

Tony flattened both his feet and his hands on the cold ground, letting the freeze seep fully into his bones. Bring him back. Because none of that happened. The kid was safe.

Would he stay safe? Would Hydra go looking for him, if Cap escaped? No, it wouldn’t come to that. Getting Cap out of his cage was the only way to ensure it. Even with everything that lay between them, even though Tony absolutely abhorred the idea of asking Rogers for anything, for this he’d _beg._ And Rogers would listen, Tony couldn’t deny it. He’d get out of here and keep the kid safe.

So he waited, waited for Rogers to come-to. He had a window of three hours or so, between when Rogers became lucid enough to talk and when his captors would come in with a new injection of some perverse horror.

It wasn’t gradual; one moment Steve was slumped against the walls of his cage, and the next his piercing gaze was locked with Tony’s, both of them aware of their surroundings at the same time, for almost the first time.

“Tony,” Cap started, and he sounded painfully sincere. “Th—”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. They’re using you to make a weapon, a bio-weapon, and you need to get out of here yesterday.” Tony held up the device, already calibrated, but Rogers interrupted him before he could explain what it was.

“ _We_.” Steve winced and swallowed hard, like that short word had pained him.

“Si? Da? Yes? I could go on, but we don’t have the time to play Duolingo, Rogers.” 

“ _We_ need to get out of here. I don’t know what you have planned, Tony, but…” Rogers rested his head against the glass, now smudged with blood and sweat and grime. He didn’t seem to care. “But I’m not leaving here without you.” He laughed without a trace of humor, and added, “I don’t even know if I could.”

Tony was torn between his utter frustration with how self-righteous Rogers was being, and the genuine simplicity in his wide, sincere eyes. It reminded him so much of Peter he was at a loss, momentarily. It was hard to stay the course of his curt resolution when it was so easy to imagine Peter there, instead. Tony tried desperately to school his thoughts, but they kept landing on pity. He hated that he couldn’t shake it, and that when he spoke, it was like he was talking to the kid, instead of someone who defended the man who choked the life out of his mother.

“We don’t have time for that, Steve. ‘I’m so brave, no _you_ are,’ let’s skip all that.” He held up the device again. “I can short out _one_ of our cells. That means that _one_ of us can try to fight our way out of here, and it has to be you. We can’t let them turn you into a weapon, Rogers. _You_ can’t let them turn Dr. Erskine’s life-work into a WMD. And the worlds needs us. At least one of us has to be out there.”

To his intensely infuriating credit, it seemed Rogers was serious about his objection, serious enough to attempt to sit straight up, despite the pull on his arm, despite the obvious effort it took. He was panting from the mere exertion of the action, his eyes somehow brighter in his pale face.

“Look at me, Stark. I can’t fight my way out of here. And the world… I’m a relic. I’m a faded symbol of something that never existed. If you’re right and something is coming… I’d have liked to be there with you, Tony. I always meant to. But you’re the one who has to be out there, not me. The world needs _you_.”

He was hungry, and that’s probably why he was struck dumb for the second time in as many minutes. He didn’t think Cap believed him about the looming threat. No one did, not really. Tony shook off compassion that was threatening to overtake him. He wouldn’t let Rogers manipulate him, not again.

“Cap, this isn’t a debate. I can short out one of our cells, and it’s going to be yours. The teeth of that trap will release, too. Get out, and…” Tony swallowed. How could he explain about the kid, explain so Rogers would understand? Was Rogers even capable of understanding? In a moment of terrible empathy, Tony realized that Steve didn’t have someone like Peter, he didn’t have… _anybody._ Not a Happy, or a Rhodey, or a Pep. All he had was the ghost of a childhood friend. He would never understand what the kid meant to Tony. He couldn’t. Tony could tell Steve to find Peter and protect him, and he would, but he’d never know why. Not really.

The idiot.

Tony took a steadying breath, shook his head once to clear it, and tried again. “It’s either me or you, Rogers, and I’m calling it. You need to get out, and you need to keep the world, and our people, safe.”

“Or, and I’m just spit-balling here, how about I get _both_ of you out?”

Tony looked up fast enough to make himself dizzy, and found himself staring into two bioelectric-reactive lenses, floating ethereally in the darkness above his cage. Tony’s violent relief _he was okay_ and visceral concern _why, how is he—where—here_ would have come out as a whimper if he'd had the opportunity to speak. Steve beat him to it.

"What is this, Queens?” He must have been regaining some semblance of his strength, because he pushed himself as high up as he could, and looked questioningly, his glance almost accosting, at the kid. He didn't trust this sudden appearance.

Peter didn't seem fazed. He flipped lightly to the ground, then winced and tried to hide it, when he saw Steve's arm. “Yeah, I know, right?” Spider-Man nodded.

A moment passed, and Peter seemed to register the incongruity in what he’d just said. “Wait, what?”

“What are you doing here?” Steve’s tone was barbed wire, each word hard as his eyes bored into the kid.

"I mean, I live here. Not _here_ -here, probably like... 40 blocks that way?" He pointed uncertainly to his left, hesitated and pointed behind him, instead, then changed his mind again and pointed left with a single thumb.

Tony's mouth caught up to his brain, finally. "We're in Queens."

Of course they were. He knew they’d been looking for Spider-Man, it only made sense that they'd set up their genetic-testing shop locally. You always kept the most volatile element as stable as possible. It was rudimentary, and he should have realized that. But it also meant that this was the least safe place for the kid on the planet right now. They were ready for him.

Tony walked up to the edge of his cell, where the kid was examining the lock and testing the bars.

"Yeah, this is Queens," Peter was saying absently. "Hammer's place."

He looked up, and apparently took in Tony's expression, because in a second he was mirroring it. "Mr. Stark, are you okay? I'm sorry we didn't find you—" he spared a glance at Rogers, "—both of you guys, sooner, I _swear_ , we looked like, _everywhere_. Sam and Nat are taking care of the guys who are," he tilted his head, "fine, Nat says the guys who _were_ running this place, and Colonel Rhodes is manning the jet. I just—sorry," he said again as he examined Tony's face.

Those damned reactive lenses. Tony had originally designed them because at the time he hadn’t known Spider-Man beyond his name, he trusted him not-at-all, and he’d thought it might be prudent to get a read on him through the mask. God, it was maybe the single best move he'd ever made. Seeing the kid cycle through worry, regret, and even guilt in the few minutes he'd been here was all Tony needed to get himself into gear. He pushed down on everything inside him that bellowed _protect!_ and instead convinced himself that this was training, it was low-risk, it was over. That this was fine.

“Don’t apologize,” Tony said, his tone light and dismissive. Then he amended, with a meticulously casual air, “I mean, do, but do it later with an expensive gift and some flowers. Something personalized. In the meantime, earn your pay and get to rescuing. What do you make of these bars?”

The kid snapped to attention as Tony spoke, the eyes of the mask widening to an at-ease alertness. Rogers was watching them, silently, his eyes narrowed as they traveled between Tony and the kid. For now, he said nothing.

“Uh, I tried them, they’re reinforced like mad. I could probably bend them, but it would take time, and we’d be better off just shorting out the locking mechanisms. I think?”

“Same.” Tony sneaked a look at Rogers, to see if he’d caught just how clever this kid was, but his suspicious expression hadn’t changed. Tony turned his focus back to the kid.

“I have a surge-relay, but it’s only enough to fry the circuits of one of the cells. If we want to get both of them open, you see that juncture box? You’re gonna need to—”

“Taser-webs,” the kid supplied, nodding. “Gotcha. Should I…?”

Tony told him to curb his enthusiasm and listen up to actual instructions, but his curtness was mostly feigned; how had he been worried about him? Peter was so _smart._

In what would be a spectacular show of skill and elegance under any other circumstances, but currently only registered as a delay—the kid shot his taser-webs, then turned and shot the locks on either cell with his standard webs, disallowing them to reengage once the power kicked back in.

The moment it was done Spider-Man turned towards Tony’s cage, then stopped in his tracks as Rogers cried out. He screamed, from deep inside his throat, and when he gasped for breath he exhaled it as an outright sob. The teeth of the trap that held his arm had loosened and retracted, but not fully. They were still halfway embedded in his arm, and even from where he stood, Tony could see Steve’s body tremble, as he struggled to keep his arm perfectly balanced, so he wouldn’t raise it into the teeth above or sink it into those below.

The kid turned to look at Tony, his eyes wide in panic, as he hovered uncertainly between the two cages. It was a fraction of a second before Tony urged him wordlessly to go help Cap, but between that moment and the next was a fleeting flash of insight where Tony knew that he loved the kid. He loved the part of Peter that couldn’t ignore suffering, not for anything; and he selfishly loved that somehow, Peter had decided that Tony might be an exception.

Tony was filled with warmth so acute it was almost distress. The feeling—which had already fled, and Tony couldn’t recreate it or put it to words—put a hole in his chest that couldn’t be filled. All he could do was try and assuage its hunger, its debilitating, worry-filled hunger, by keeping the kid close.

Already Peter was working to help Cap, nimbly slinking his fingers between the teeth of the lower jaw, standing on his toes to put his weight towards retracting them further. Cap’s eyes were screwed shut, his face painted in agony as each jagged blade withdrew, taking flesh with it.

As fast as he could on numb feet and a head spinning with dehydration, Tony pushed open the door of his own cell, and stumbled forward. He grabbed a discarded rag and folded it over several times before he took it to where Steve was struggling now to release his arm from the upper jaw, without re-impaling himself.

Peter was groaning with the effort, and Rogers was groaning with the pain. Tony joined them and with a huff of exertion squeezed the cloth between Steve’s arm and the snatching teeth beneath it. The kid maneuvered sideways, and with the lower teeth no longer a threat he now focused his efforts on lifting the upper blades.

Up close, Tony could hear the wet, slick snapping sound as the teeth pulled out of muscle and flesh, he could see the tear tracks tracing their way down Cap’s grimy face. And the blood… There was more than enough to smell. Tony looked away as the last of the blades pulled loose, and Rogers fell back into his cage, his arm protectively held against his side.

“Stand back,” Peter grunted, and released the mechanism. The jaws snapped to meet one another, shredding the rag. Frayed pieces fell slowly to the ground.

Tony raised his eyes to the kid. “Come on, he’s going to need a hand.” He held the door open for the kid, then entered after him.

Tony’s stomach convulsed at the stench inside the cage. The glass lining perhaps kept secondary exposure to disease to a minimum, but it also made the reek overpowering.

Maybe it was the olfactory filters on the mask, or maybe the kid was just a mensch, but he didn’t react to the filth or the smell, not in the cage and not on Rogers. He kneeled before Steve. “Mr. Rogers, I’m so sorry, but—can I?” He extended his arm and lightly touched the wrist of Steve’s injured arm. Rogers looked frail enough for the kid to overpower him regardless, but Peter waited until Rogers gritted his teeth, straightened his back, and allowed Peter to pull his arm, biting his lip at the movement.

Tony thought the kid was going to hoist Rogers up to his feet, but instead he extended his own wrist, and in a deft motion Tony couldn’t follow even though he was looking right at it, webbed Rogers’ forearm tightly, stemming the steady flow of blood almost immediately.

Steve sighed with relief, his eyes fluttering shut in what must have been his least-painful moment in the last few days. When he reopened them, they were filled with so much patented Captain America grit Tony had to look away or risk smacking him.

The kid pulled Rogers to his feet, and they made it as far as the door to the cage before it was obvious, to Tony, at least, that Rogers needed a break. His ashen face was pulled tight, determined to power through, but Tony caught the way his breath hitched and his feet stumbled.

“Kid, let’s catch our breath, for a minute.”

“No,” Rogers hissed. He pulled in more air, and attempted to speak at a more natural tone, but failed, miserably. Very word was still laced with barely contained pain. “We should keep going. If we’re in Queens that means…” Rogers trailed off, but his gaze lingered on the kid.

So he’d understood the implication, as well. It was so easy to forget the man wasn’t an all-muscled idiot.

“We should just get out of here as soon as possible,” Steve finished, then took deep, gasping breaths like he’d been underwater.

That apparently decided the kid. He lowered Rogers against a wall, and said, “We definitely should get out of here, but I just lost comms. We should probably wait till we hear from Nat or Sam. That door over there’s our only way out. The way I got in is no good for three of us. And this is as good a place as any to fight, if we have to,” he finished, while making a show of checking out the door, the high-set rafters, and the height of the walls.

And it _was_ a show. Tony knew he must have scoped all that out on his way in. But it was good of him to explain his tactical choices as though Cap had veto power.

“Alright,” Rogers said, sinking against the wall and already looking a little less grey. Then, infuriatingly, he turned to Tony. “What now?”

Tony shook his head as sarcastically as he knew how, and turned to the kid. “What now, Spider-Man? Sounds like for a change you’re here with responsible backup, yeah?”

“Oh, yeah, the responsiblest.”

“Most responsible,” Rogers managed to breathe, and Tony couldn’t tell if he was joking. He’d better be. To be pedantic right now to the guy who saved his ass…

“You got Friday in there, or Karen?” Tony cut in, before Steve could undermine the kid again.

“Is this a good time to talk about Muppet Babies?” The eyes narrowed in the mask, “Cause yeah, I got access to both.”

“No, and great,” Tony nodded, then stopped because it caused his vision to tunnel. He stopped talking and leaned against the wall to catch his bearing, and the kid turned so he was facing his directly.

“Mr. Stark, are you okay?”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine,” Tony said, a little sharply if he judged by Rogers’ surprised look. “Let me just—”

Tony stepped closer to the kid, and spoke a series of commands close to his ear. “What did that do? Did the display change?”

“Uh, yeah, cool!”

“I can’t see what you can, tell me what’s up in the HUD, right now? What do you see?”

“Oh--Three tree menus, the first item of the first one is highlighted, is says ‘remote access,’ and underneath it are… eleven options, the first one is—”

“Okay, great. Go to the sixth option. Sixth. It should say, ‘lab 1.3,’ does it say that? Select it.”

The eyes of the suit narrowed and widened, as the kid asked, “How do I—oh, man, this is so cool. Got it. Lab 1.3. I’m guessing you’re gonna want to ‘select Mark?’”

“Exactly. Find XC, then select current location, got it?”

“Done.” The kid lowered his gaze from the middle distance, and said, “These graphics are _beyond_ amazing, Mr. Stark. But are you sure the command went through? I think we wouldn’t know if we were disrupted, at least—”

“Tony, is this really necessary?” Rogers interrupted, and Tony’s chest erupted in angry, consuming flames. “I’m sorry,” Rogers said to Peter, his voice weak yet firm. “But I’m out of commission. I get that these things are exciting when you’re new at this, but we need to get out of here, not discuss Tony’s graphics.”

Tony exhale sharply through his teeth, almost hissing. He wanted to say so much, partly about the kid, partly about… everything else. Every bit of entitlement and blinder-view that caused Roger’s sincerity to shift into a broken cynicism. But he wouldn’t reinforce what Rogers was implying. He let the kid handle it.

The kid looked at Rogers, and let silence hang between them for a spell. Then, “If Mr. Stark can’t get a suit, I’ll need to carry both of you to get out. Which is okay, I guess. Mr. Stark can hold on to my back, and I can carry you like a princess. But you’re right, we’ll figure all that out later.”

Tony smirked behind them; the kid knew damn well that his sincerity had become something else.

When the kid turned back to Tony, he thought he was going to ask about the graphics again. But instead Peter stepped closer, his arms extended. He dropped them just as he came up to Tony, as though unsure whether contact was a good idea.

“Uh, hey, Mr. Stark. Barely got a chance to say ‘hi’ before, things were happening so quickly,” the kid said. “So, uh, hi. I’m _really_ glad we found you.” He didn’t correct himself to the plural, that time.

Tony was aching to bridge the distance, but he felt too acutely under Cap’s gaze to do so. His… thing—mentorship, friendship, whatever it was—with Peter was one of the few things that hadn’t been tainted by Rogers. Even his last memory of his mom had been stolen by Captain America, now replaced by her shuddering outline as her larynx was crushed by _his friend._ Tony desperately wanted, _needed_ , to keep this from Steve. He couldn’t handle Steve’s criticism, or judgment, or pity, or whatever it was the supersoldier was going to dish out of supersoldiered face. There’d be other opportunities to show the kid how much he cared, how much he knew the _kid_ cared, how much… all of it. But not right now.

“Honestly, I’m glad, too,” Tony said, and the kid’s shoulders dropped a little of their tension, and the reactive lenses reacted, and Tony just knew the kid was smiling in gratitude even though he was the one who deserved the thanks, and Tony couldn’t help himself. He reached out anyway, and cupped the base of the kid’s neck. “Sorry I skipped out on Tuesday.

“But,” Tony added, lightening his tone and determinately not looking at Rogers, who he could feel looking at _him_ , “I’d like to get out of here before next Tuesday, so if Rogers here has caught his breath, getting out of here would be, you know,” Tony shrugged, “good.”

He squeezed the back of the kid’s neck, lightly, hoping he’d understand that Tony’s impatience wasn’t with him.

God, Pepper was right. He was a terrible communicator.

The kid nodded and turned back towards the door, but stopped in his tracks almost immediately.

“Comms are back up,” Peter said, then added, “I’m not saying that,” shaking his head and crossing his arms for emphasis. A pause, and then he _uch_ ed, and turned to Tony, his body language now exasperated, defeated. “Rhodey says he’ll see _you_ next Tuesday.”

He paused, listening, then added, “He wants me to spell it out for you, in case you don’t get it. You can’t see because of the mask, but I’m actually losing small pieces of my soul in here.”

“Tell Rhodes I’m reporting him to HR,” Tony said. The kid flat-out refused, and Tony laughed.

And it wasn’t because Rhodey was an idiot, or because the kid was embarrassed. He’d been gone, almost _gone-_ gone, and this was the first glimpse he’d had of what things would be like without him, and it set something inside him deeply at ease. He knew Rhodey, and he knew Peter. They were both fighters. If something happened to him, they’d each find a way to cope, to survive; he’d known that for a while.

But he wanted more for them. Rhodey and Happy were resilient in a way Tony wasn’t. They were strong, and stable, and solid. They knew what to do with grief, how to channel it. How to live with it. And what’s more—they had Pepper, and they had one another.

Peter… He was strong, too, in his own way. But Tony knew that if this had been it, or worse, _It_ , it’d have hit the kid hard. Even now, watching him trying to report back to Rhodey on unstable comms while pulling Steve Rogers to his feet, Tony could tell that Peter was preoccupied with _him._ He kept glancing his way, or double-checking information Tony had no way of knowing ( _the Iron Man suit should be on its way, Mr. Stark? Nat and Sam should’ve cleared the threats by now, right?)_. A familiar flash of warmth flooded him and then receded again, before Tony could place it, or name it. He let it go; he wasn’t ready to tug on that thread.

He _was_ ready to get gone, though. “What are we waiting for?” Tony asked, when it became apparent they were doing just that—waiting. “Why aren’t we moving forward?” He hated being out of the intel loop. Where was that suit?

“Uh, Sam, uh, Wilson,” Peter corrected as though Tony didn’t know who that could be, and he was careful to include Cap in his glance, “says that they cleared the facility, but now the Hydra assh—now Hydra called in backup. Major backup. They’re shooting at the jet, so he’s gone up to cover Rhodes. Nat is trying to hold them back at Hammer’s factory, at the other side of that hallway.” Peter pointed towards the door Doc and his little Hydra minions used to get in and out of the room with the cages.

“Oh—Nat’s running out of ammo, she needs someone to draw them out, but, it sounds like things are getting serious, I—we—they need help, they need backup,” Spider-Man added, his reactive lenses taking on a wide, helpless expression.

Rogers pulled himself to his feet, balancing heavily against the wall, and even though his head was practically lolling in weakness and pain, he had that same determined look on his face. “There _is_ no one else. There is no back-up, not for this mission. I’m able to fight, now, Spider-Man. I’ll make my way to Romanoff. You, you get Tony out of here. I can stall them. Don’t wait for the suit, you just pick him up and carry him, get him out of here.”

There were so many scenarios in which that wouldn’t happen, and in all of them it wouldn’t happen in front of Rogers. So many. And _all_ of them.

He wished he didn’t have to address Rogers directly, but he wasn’t going to let him give orders to the kid. Especially not orders that played to Peter’s absurd guilt complex.

“You—” he said to Rogers, pointing but not quite making eye-contact, “are Captain Nothing, you got that? You don’t give orders to the kid, especially not dumb orders. Remember bioweapons? Passive immunity? Any of this ringing a bell? Remember them injecting you, for days on-end, with whatever contagious shit they wanted? You stay behind, they kill millions. Do you get that?

“And you—” Tony turned now to the kid, “is this your first day here? You, me—” Tony pointed to the space between them, “ _we’re_ backup. We’re the best backup they could ask for, yeah? While we’re waiting for my suit you call Captain…I forget his name. The guy in, in…” Tony snapped his fingers, the details all evading him.

“Quaid, in Brooklyn?”

“Uh, sure.” It didn’t actually sound familiar, but Tony knew there was a cop the kid trusted. “Can he get us some police out here?”

“Yeah, actually,” the kid said, nodding. “He knows we’re looking for you, he’s willing to help.”

“You involved the police?” Rogers looked questioningly from Peter to Tony, and Tony actually felt a little bad for the surprise and confusion that were clearly consuming him. To not be able to fathom how working with law-enforcement might be to their advantage… No wonder he couldn’t get behind the Accords. There was so much distrust.

The kid instructed Karen to make the call to the police, and then assured Tony and Rogers that they’d be out here in numbers within minutes.

They could now hear the sounds of the fight drawing nearer; gunshots echoed beyond the door, heavy machinery rumbled overhead, and Peter winced every time something _boomed!_ around them, like he was hearing Nat or Sam’s reactions over the comms.

Tony caught the eye of Peter’s mask. “We’ll help them out any minute. We’re their backup.”

“I’m backup,” Peter said, and standing straighter he shook out his arms, flexed his wrists, then braced himself facing the door, which was now shaking with the force of the explosions on the other side of it.

But it was the ceiling, high above them, that exploded. With a bone-shaking inverse sort of _crack!_ it shattered, showering them with flakes of dirt and dust, and concrete. Steve lunged towards to the kid, and knocked away any large slabs of stone that fell his way. For once, his protective determination wasn’t misplaced.

Through a small, neat hole a smaller, neater object fell, but it didn’t hit the ground. It seemed to land on Tony’s head, but instead of impacting it melted around him, enveloping him, connecting and firing up in smooth elegance.

The HUD came online.

Readings came in and were dismissed with a flick of his eyes.

“Good to have you back, Boss,” Friday welcomed him.

He was home.

The rest of that evening passed like a dream, one Tony would later remember in super-slow-motion and perfect clarity. Every detail, every nuance, every glance and breath. They were seared into his mind, in a perfect loop that fed itself, locking him in. There were worse memories to be trapped by, he knew.

When Tony closed his eyes, he could still smell the air after being indoors and underground for so long. He hadn’t asked Friday to filter it in for him but she had done it anyway, and he was grateful. He could feel how his body adjusted to the extra weight of the kid riding along on a web. He could remember the look on Steve’s face when he dropped him off at a pickup point for Rhodey, and bade him to lay low until the quinjet arrived.

“Tony, I can help,” Steve had said, pleading. He glanced at the kid, who was bouncing on the balls of his feet a little ways off. Rogers lowered his voice to a whisper. “He’s too young, and too eager. Let me help.” He’d even gone so far as to put a retraining hand on Tony’s armor, gripping strongly enough to keep him from easily moving away.

It took Tony a long time to realize the need in Steve’s voice was a desperate plea to be allowed to do something right.

But in the moment Tony hadn’t seen it. He aggressively shrugged off Rogers’ grip. “The cops are on their way. I’m not going to turn you in, but the kid doesn’t need to be seen working with you. He actually has a life here, one he’s not willing to throw away. One _I’m_ not going to _let_ him throw away, not by working with you. And if he’s eager, it’s to keep his team alive, which is a nice change of pace around here. Just wait for Rhodes.

“Kid!” Tony shouted, already taking off, and Peter shot a web onto his suit without missing a beat.

“Uh, see you later Captain Ro—Whoa—” His surprised cry turned into a whoop of exhilaration as Tony accelerated far beyond what was acceptable within city limits. Tony had never admitted it—he probably never would—but there was a unique thrill in having the kid ride along like that. Part of it was the immense trust he put in Tony, to ride a thread in a cityscape, a ride that could turn into a freefall in a monent.

But for a short while, Tony _knew_ he was going to die in that cage, leaving the kid to fend for himself in a world where even allies were hostile, and hostiles were worse. There was a deeper, more robust joy at watching the kid come into himself and his powers, swinging with confidence as he readjusted his webs whichever way Tony twisted and dived. It was a pocket of pride Tony didn’t think he’d be around to see, and as he flew over the grounds, scanning for Hydra soldiers, Tony found himself unwilling to think about that other, what-if world. His heart was crushed by the reluctance to pursue it.

To turn leaving the kid into reality, even an imagined one, was making it hard to breathe. Peter hadn’t even had his first drink, or learned how to drive, or graduated or chosen a school or grown to his full height or—Tony wasn’t ready to leave him.

He wouldn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy to hear your thoughts, comments, insights, and what worked (and what didn't)!


	6. Tony: part two

Tony volunteered to do the dishes, like he did every night, because there was exactly one picture of the kid in the house, and exactly one spot from which he could look at it without being terribly obvious.

Of course Pepper knew what he was doing, but she never insisted on doing the evening dishes, and never offered to keep him company while he washed and dried. Still, some part of him was embarrassed at his little ritual. 

It was hard to remember a time he’d been so naïve that his biggest fear was dying and missing out on the kid’s life, even though he knew he’d felt that way once.

He’d felt that way that night, the thing with Steve and Hydra. He’d been so proud fighting alongside the kid to get Nat out, and all he could think about was how he never wanted to miss another moment of this kid coming into himself.

Well, the world’s unfunniest joke was on him.

The first eighteen months had been the worst, Tony thought as he scrubbed the casserole dish, pointedly not looking at the shelf to his right.

It was a bunch of little things, that made living hell. After… _after,_ he’d find himself halfway through the math on an upgrade before he realized he was upgrading a dead suit for a dead kid; every time he closed his eyes he could almost feel the space the kid took up, how far he’d have to move his arms to complete the embrace he never gave, to close an ever open circuit; and for weeks, whenever he found himself in a sunbeam filled with dancing motes he would fall to his knees and vomit until he shook.

He finally got that under control, and for a while he’d only needed to concentrate, and remind himself that _it’s not Peter, it’s not Peter._ He avoided dustlight when he could, though. It still made him feel like he was bathing in the kid’s ashes.

That worked until one day a couple of years ago the baby napped late, so she went to bed late, and she woke up a little late the next morning, too. He and Pepper had enjoyed their morning coffee together, hot, for the first time since Morgan came along. It was a rare quiet morning interrupted by Morgan screaming bloody murder.

They rushed to her room to find her cowering away from a sunbeam in a corner of her crib, red-faced in her panic, and screaming, “Not Peter! _Not Peter!”_

Pepper made him go to therapy after that, but he would have gone, regardless; he wouldn’t let her first impression of Pete be terror. Neither of them deserved that.

Tony allowed himself a second’s glance at the picture he was avoiding. It was taken the morning after he and Steve had been rescued from Hydra. After a too-short sleep and a too-big breakfast, Happy was going to drive Tony down to Queens to give his statement to the cops, and drop the kid off at home. They had specifically stopped by SI in the City to pick up the intern retreat participation form.

“Here,” Happy had said, shoving the framed certificate into the kid’s hands, where he waited outside. “Pepper had it signed this morning, it’s all official. Your principal is expecting this.”

“Oh, great, thanks you so much,” Peter said, then frowned as he looked closer at the document. When he looked up his face was a map of despair. “I—What—Happy, I can’t use this!”

Tony leaned over the kid’s shoulder to see what his issue was, and _yikes._ He wasn’t wrong.

“Pepper signed this?” Tony pulled off his shades, trying to make sense of the certificate.

“Well, yeah, she was in a hurry. What’s the problem? It’s a fake retreat, it doesn’t need to be accurate. Let’s go, traffic’s building up.”

“Happy, it says I completed a 3-day course-retreat on computerating engineerings! That’s—it’s—” Peter sputtered, “those aren’t even words! I can’t give this to Mr. Morita!” His voice was high-enough to make Happy wince.

“Well, no one ever handed me the fake syllabus of your pretend internship, so I didn’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. And there’s no time to print a new one, so you’ll have to make do?” Happy shrugged like it wasn’t really his problem, but he looked slightly panicked, and the kid looked like he was about to cry. Tony took pity on both of them. Happy was kinda right, this _wasn’t_ his forte.

“Calm down, kid, I was bullshitting teachers since before you were born. This is what we’re gonna do. Happy, step back, bit more—” Tony shooed Happy back until he was standing with his back pressed up against the town car. “—great. Now, kid, you stand here.” Tony threw his arm around him.

“Alright, Hap, take a picture of us with the certificate. Peter, hold it upside down so it’s hard to read… Yeah, like that. You show _just_ the picture to your principal, say you left the original in the lab or something. No one wants to see a participation form when they could be looking at me,” Tony smiled cheekily, and the kid laughed.

“Nope, that wasn’t a joke. You’ll see,” Tony corrected him, then looked down at him and nudged. “Pete, look a little happier. You just learned how to computerate from the best engineeringer in the world yeah? Be dazzled. Amazed. Oh, look, you’re a bunny.”

Peter laughed again and then made a face, and Tony had pulled the kid in a little closer while Happy snapped the photo.

Had that really been as close as Tony ever got to hugging him?

Tony moved on to the plates.

No, there was a moment at the end of the previous night, when he’d gotten closer.

And great. He’d just finished thinking about that mission, but here he was, again.

~*~

He and the kid headed towards Romanoff, stopping only to free Sam Wilson from a game of get-away with Hydra guys who were not shy about how many surface-to-air missiles would appear on their expense reports. They launched their MPADs with abandon, and every time they missed, the wider industrial complex lit up like an inferno.

By the time they finished Natasha came as close to begging for help as she got.

“If you guys aren’t here in two minutes, don’t bother.” Her words were punctuated by gunshots and at least one unmanly scream. Tony led the way inside, the kid and Sam following close behind him. The two of them bickered enough for Tony to snap at them, and then they bickered in what he guessed were supposed to be whispers.

Tony and Sam tag-teamed as air-cover, while the kid bounded between the operatives converging on Nat’s location in a blur of web and nonstop chatter.

Sam announced the all-clear, and Romanoff joined them on the main floor, tucking away a gun and a suspiciously glistening throwing knife.

“How do you boys keep getting into trouble like this? Normal people don’t need repeated kidnappings for family reunions.” She nodded at Sam, and reached over to Peter to squeeze his shoulder, reassuring either him or herself, Tony wasn’t sure. Then she looked at Tony, with a look so sharp it felt like she was trying to pierce his armor.

Tony looked her up and down, and when Friday had scanned her and he was sure that Nat was none the worse for wear, he raised his faceplate, and Nat visibly relaxed.

“One, not a fan.” He pointed at her black hair. Its harsh contrast with her pale skin gave her face a severe, unforgiving appearance, one that didn’t suit her at all. “You know I like a redhead, but barring that, you should go back to blond. Have more fun.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and shook her head and crossed her arms, the overkilled gesture a wordless code that she was amused.

 _(and Tony knew it wasn’t fair to rely on anyone in the_ after _, but Natasha was the only one who understood, the only one who also lost kids that weren’t hers. She knew what he’d lost, and she knew it wasn't replaceable by what—and who— he’d gained. He was happy to see her earlier today, he always was; her way with Morgan, and with him, were a small taste of the_ before _, the only reminder that didn’t hurt.)_

“And two,” Tony continued, and already the deliberate change in his tone caused Nat to look at him, her eyes narrowed in sharp scrutiny, “this isn’t _my_ trouble. It’s not even Rogers’. We were just the unfortunate consolation prize.”

Only sirens punctuated the silence that wrapped around them, the sound filtering in through the broken windows. Romanoff’s tilted her head in in a wordless query, indicating the kid without so much as looking at him. Tony’s nod confirmed her surmise.

“What do you mean consolation prize, Mr. Stark?” Peter asked, looking at each adult in the room, waiting for one of them to explain.

“He means these people have dangerous information,” Wilson said, “and we need to get rid of it before anyone finds it.” His answer was vague enough not to worry the kid, but urgent enough to get them all going. Tony nodded his thanks when Peter wasn’t looking.

“Friday can take care of the soft copies of their data,” Tony said. “but they may have some hard copies. Find a lab, if they have anything it’ll be there.”

“What kind of lab?” Romanoff pulled out a device of her own, and opened a blueprint of the facility. She scrolled through various rooms as Tony responded.

“Serology. Maybe biochemistry, I’m not sure how permanent this facility was going to be.”

She nodded. “The best bet is… here.” She turned to device around to reveal a highlighted section, just a couple hundred feet from where they were.

They split up. Sam took a reluctant Peter back to the jet, and Tony and Natasha went to destroy whatever was left in the lab, and grab an old-fashioned cell phone that was left lying around. When they were done Romanoff led the way out of the facility, from the direction of the fair grounds. The police hadn’t cordoned off that area yet, though they seemed to be making their way there. Quaid hadn’t lied; he’d sent all of Queens’ finest.

It took Tony several minutes to find the officer in charge, give him an abridged and highly alternate version of what had happened, and a promise for a full report in the morning.

When he finally rejoined the others on the jet, all he wanted to do was collapse, to sleep until he could find a shower, and then sleep again, possibly _in_ the shower. He wouldn’t be picky.

But as soon as the ramp closed behind him, he was confronted with his next slew of responsibilities. The first was Rhodes, who practically tackled him into a warm embrace. Tony held him tightly, careful not to crush him with the strength of the suit.

“Tones, you have got to stop this Ultimate Hide-and-Seek bullshit, yeah? How many times I gotta tell you, don’t do shit I wouldn’t do.”

“Yeah, well, this one wasn’t my fault. In fact, it’s never my fault.” Tony took a step back, and finally processed what he was seeing.

“What the hell happened to you?”

He looked at the others, turning in his spot to catch sight of them all. Natasha was in the pilot’s seat, and Sam was sitting with Rogers in one of the darkened alcoves, removing web and stitching up his arm. He’d seen them both, he’d _scanned_ them both, and they seemed unharmed, aside from a long scratch down Wilson’s face. Rogers was injured, and _filthy,_ but even he was looking more recovered, almost himself, that ridiculous beard notwithstanding.

Why had no one said anything about Rhodey?

“What happened?” Tony gestured at the arm in the sling, and now that he was thinking about it, there _was_ a stiffness to the hug, to Rhdoes’ general movement. “You’re hurt. How did you get hurt? Who else is hurt?”

“Whoa, man, calm down. I’m fine, we’re fine. We just ran into a Hydra base we weren’t prepared for. Your guy Parker here took care of it, though.”

The kid had been resting with his head back, but raised it upon hearing his name. “I what? Somebody said me?”

Tony deactivated the suit, and it collapsed back into itself in a neat pile at his feet as he examined the kid. Something was… _We’re_ fine, Rhodey’d said.

“Hey, Pete, pull off your mask real quick.” Tony squeezed Rhodey’s arm, and Rhodes gave an obnoxiously knowing look, as Tony lowered himself to sit next to the kid.

“Uh, no?”

“What do you mean, _no_? Since when do you tell me _no_?”

“Since I don’t want you to flip out at me,” Peter answered honestly, and then pulled out something from the backpack next to him. “Here,” he said, and tossed Tony a cracker pack and a juice box.

Tony stared.

“Standard post-kidnapping snack. I always get _so_ hungry after stuff like this. It’s not a lot, but I already called Happy while you were talking to the cops. He said he’d get real food.”

Tony stared.

“I—” Peter faltered. “What?”

“Nothing,” Tony said, and finally tore his glance away from the kid. He blinked rapidly at the food in his hand, worrying with the wrapper more than he needed to so he’d have a few moments to collect himself.

_(He hadn’t known why the gesture hit him so hard, not until one day he stubbed his toe and bit back a curse and Morgan had toddled over and stuffed a pacifier into his mouth with chubby fingers. Modelling and imitation, Pep had called it.)_

“Cheese _and_ peanut butter? Thanks, kid,” Tony said.

Peter waited till he was a couple of crackers in. “Mr. Stark? You’re super happy with me right now, right?”

Tony gave him a skeptic look.

“And, like, you’re probably pretty relieved that we found you? And remember that _I’m_ the one who called Happy and told him to order you food, yeah?”

“Kid, wh—”

Peter pulled off his mask a in brisk movement, like he was pulling off a Band Aid. “You promised not to flip out!” He said, which was a complete lie.

Peter’s face gave Tony every right to flip out. The bruises were ugly, aged, and all over. Tony felt guilt uncoiling in his chest before he could even register what he felt guilty about. The kid reacted like he’d spoken out loud.

“It’s not a big deal, I swear,” he said, holding both hands in front of him as though to stave off an attack. “And by tomorrow it’ll be totally gone, so it’s really nothing. I just need to sleep it off.”

The kid finished speaking and breathed heavily, like he’d just sprinted. It made Tony suspect that he wasn’t taking full breaths, either. But he looked anxious enough about Tony’s reaction that Tony didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right. He’d get the details later, from Rhodes.

“If not for the cheese crackers, I’d be all over your case, you know that, right?”

“That’s why I got them.”

“You’re a liar,” Tony grunted, pushing himself to his feet.

“That’s true,” Peter said, and opened a snack for himself.

Tony pulled Rhodey to the front of the jet, where they fought over who would take the copilot’s seat next to Nat.

Tony won, and Rhodes he sank into the seat with a small sigh.

“Is he really okay?” Tony whispered, looking back to where Peter sat, his arms now folded protectively over his middle.

“He really is, Tones. He’s… Well, you know. Special. You gave him _Friday_?”

Natasha turned slightly in her chair, to indicate she was listening as well.

“Who else? Romanoff here,” he put a hand on her shoulder, “tends to pop up where she’s needed most, but I can’t count on that, and you wouldn’t let me give you permissions. Cap’s right, he and I are dinosaurs. If we’re lucky, we have one last fight left in us. The Big One. After that… It’s gonna be him.”

Rhodey nodded as he thought through that.

“The others… It won’t be easy.”

“You know I’m in his corner,” Nat said, turning now to fully face Tony, “but Rhodes is right. He’s so young… They won’t follow him. Not easily.”

Tony clenched both his fists in response to that, and released them. “That’s okay. It shouldn’t _be_ easy. We saw where blind loyalty led the team the last time around.”

Neither of them replied.

Eventually, Natasha asked, “Where to? I have to imagine the Compound isn’t really an option for Steve Rogers.”

“No, it’s not. And I would never think so, Tony.” Rogers’ smooth, irritating sincerity materialized inches from Tony’s ear. He flinched.

Rogers apologized with a glance, then continued. “You’ve—all of you—have done more than enough. Drop us off anywhere, we’ll be okay.”

Tony examined him. He was standing tall. His arm had been dressed and he’d cleaned up some, and changed into a drab military undershirt. Even some of his color was back. He probably _would_ be okay, and it wasn’t like Tony wasn’t tempted to hand him a parachute and wish him a bon-voyage.

But Tony could also see the minor tremors than ran down his bad arm, and he could hear the faint, measured double-in-double-out breathes that meant he trying to manage pain. Tony hated that he knew these tells, and that he still knew how to read them. He absolutely _hated it._

But he did, and he couldn’t ignore them. So he’d told Romanoff to take them to a small cabin on a large lake in one of Tony’s properties upstate, way past the Compound. He made it clear that Wilson and Rogers could stay there for as long as they needed, but also that Ross knew about the place. Staying there for longer than a week or so would be a gamble.

Tony went to sit by the kid. The cockpit area had gotten crowded.

He’d been worried that the kid would overhear his conversation with Rhodey and Nat, but that was obvious not a concern; he was fast asleep, mouth hanging slightly open, a little wetness pooling in the corner. He was out.

Tony hadn’t meant to bother him, but the moment his shoulder brushed against Peter he moved, allowing his head to dip onto Tony’s shoulder.

The wetness unpooled, and Tony was surprised he didn’t really care. He maneuvered his arm behind the kid, so he could support him if the jet jerked unexpectedly.

He leaned his head back. He must have fallen asleep, as well, because the next thing he knew he was blinking his eyes open as Nat was saying, “No, don’t wake them.”

“He’s awake,” Tony said, stretching sleep away from his face.

“We’re there,” Romanoff said. “I’m gonna get off with the guys. My cover in Bear Mountain is burned, anyway. But I’ll be in touch. Be safe, Tony.” She leaned in for light a hug, careful not to jostle the arm that was holding the kid.

“Tell him I said I’ll see him around,” Nat whispered with a fond smile, and was the first one off the jet. Tony could just barely make out the outline of the cabin in the darkness.

Wilson came up next, tentatively, and extended a hand. Tony shook it. “Thanks for the rescue,” Tony said.

“Nah, these guys would’ve found you, regardless. I was only there for moral support.”

Wilson looked behind him, to where Cap and Rhodey were whispering together, and lowered his voice further. “Listen, man, I don’t know if it’s my place—I mean, it’s _not_ , but I can’t not say something—”

“Maybe don’t go there? It’s been a long week,” Tony asked, almost begged.

“I’m only a medic, but I know post-trauma when I see it. Your Muppet Baby has it in spades, and he’s been trying to deal with it alone. Just thought you should know.”

It took Tony several beats to put all that together. He’d been fully expecting a defense of Cap. An attack on the Accords. Maybe even some Barnes Propaganda, for spice. It seemed nothing was further from Sam’s mind, though. Like only Tony was still having that fight, churning those arguments, reliving that vitriol.

But more importantly, “Muppet Baby? He lets you call him that?”

“Hell, no. But he blames you every time I do it, so that’s like a season pass for me.” Sam hoisted his bags onto his shoulder. “Anyway, we should get going. Thanks for letting us use your place. You’re good people, Stark.”

Sam nodded to himself, and turned to follow Romanoff off the jet, but Tony called him back with a whisper. “Hey, thanks.” He touched his cheek to the kid’s hair, so Wilson would know what for.

Wilson offered Tony a mock salute, then gave Rhodes a real one.

That only left Cap. Rhodey was hanging back, and if he’d already said his goodbyes he seemed content—if not gleeful—to let Tony handle his on his own.

“Tony, I—”

“Does it matter, Cap?” Tony made an effort, now, to look him in the eye. To look at his slightly gaunt frame, his mouth pressed into a thin line behind his beard, at the way he held his shoulders like posture was the only thing keeping him from shattering.

“Does it matter? Nothing’s changed. You won’t take anything back, I am still committed to the Accords. I’m sorry you got caught up in this,” Tony squeezed the arm around the kid, “that wasn’t meant for you. But there’s nothing else to say.”

“You’re saying an awful lot for someone with nothing left to say,” Rogers retorted, and Tony supposed he was truly recovering, because he was rocking his condescension like it was going out of style.

“I’m sorry, Tony. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. It’s just—well, you know. You were there.” Rogers ran a hand across his jaw, down his neck. “And I’m sorry to take advantage of the fact that your arm is pinned right now and you can’t get away, but…You’re right about the fact that nothing’s changed. I will still be there whenever you call. This,” he shrugged his bad arm, “this is a small price to pay for the chance that that call was real. There is no crying ‘wolf’ with you and me. If you call again, I’ll be there.”

Steve swallowed, opened his mouth, but didn’t add anything else in the end. 

Rhodey closed the ramp after him, and took them home.

Peter hadn’t woken when Rhodey landed the jet or when he lowered the ramp. He only sunk a little lower, so his head was more on Tony’s chest, than on his shoulder.

Tony shook his head when Rhodes offered to wake up the kid. “I’ll wake him, but in a few minutes. He’s so tired,” Tony whispered. He closed his eyes, again, and when he opened them Rhodey was gone and Pepper was there.

“Hey,” she said softly, and fell to her knees in front of him. “How are you?”

Tony used his free hand to cup her face. Her beautiful, worried, tired face.

“I’m good. This wasn’t about me, just a stupid misunderstanding of some stupid people. I need to eat, and shower, but I’m good.”

“You look like you need to sleep. Rhodey says he does, too.” She looked down at Peter, then back at Tony. “There’s a lot you need to fill me in on, huh? After you get off of the jet and _sleep._ ”

“I’ve done nothing _but_ sleep for three days. Right now, I just… I need to rest.”

Pepper rose and sat on his other side, holding his hand.

“Is that what this is?”

Tony turned towards the kid, towards his mess of hair that rested on his chest. He kissed Peter’s head lightly, reverently, imperceptibly.

“Yeah. This is rest.”

~*~

He let the pull-out sprayer go a little wide, so he’d have an excuse to pick up the photo. There was something about that night, something his mind kept pulling him back to.

Try as he might, he couldn’t—he couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

He thought it had to with how the kid hesitated, before going to help Cap… Or maybe it was just guilt, over the fact that the only time he’d displayed affection was when the kid was knocked out, having run a month’s worth of missions trying to find Tony.

Was it Nat? Because she and Happy were the only ones who really knew the kid, and she’d been by earlier that day, to talk about Scott’s absurd time-heist? Maybe that’s why all this was coming up.

To get the kid back… He wasn’t willing to give anyone false hope, not even Steve. So yeah, he’d said that he _wouldn’t even._

But he’d tried. He’d run numbers, and scenarios, and they all returned the same non-results. It was like he said. The odds of surviving were nonsensically small.

Almost as small as getting kidnapped and kept in fucking _Queens_ for four days, Tony thought, and _why was he going there again?_ It was like every thought he had today, if he traced it long enough, led right back into that underground room; like his entire psyche was trying, but failing, to orient itsel—

~*~

“I’ve had a mild inspiration,” Tony said. He really should print more photos of the kid. “Like to see if it checks out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Tony is plenty screwed up, but also not as badly as he might have been considering what Howard was like. He must have had positive male role models. I wanted to explore how Happy and Rhodey might have been that for him, and how that translates into their relationship with Peter (FFH gave us wonderful Happy & Peter moments, and nothing for Rhodey). That's how this fusion character-study/action fic was born. 
> 
> 2) The scene I refer to in Endgame is _far_ too sparse for my liking. We got so little Tony and Peter interaction (or even mentions), and I wanted to try and bolster it with some meaningful backstory. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, I hope this did something for you, and of course, comments are always appreciated.


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